The loss of autonomy of the state and the limits of political Robert Kurz
The loss of autonomy of the state and the limits of political
Four theses on the crisis of political regulation
1. Market and State, economy and politics as the poles of the same historical field
In the history of the modern world clashed continuously two or more principles less hostile to one another, market and state, economy and politics, capitalism and socialism. Always has renewed the conflict between "homo economicus" and "homo politicus" every advance of modernity, every crisis took to the field against each other armed "individualists" and "collectivist", entrepreneurs and advocates of free planned economy, business managers and state bureaucrats, and liberal interventionists, supporters of free trade and protectionism. In recent decades this constellation has taken the form of an economic-political conflict between monetarists and Keynesians.
Both parties can boast, in retrospect, success and failures. But how can this go on? Today we are not only at the end of a century and a millennium, but maybe at the end of the constellations and conflicts which were previously used at the end of modernity, and possibly the end of economic policy. Everywhere seems to be feeling the way that you do not have to do simply with a very unusual occurrence, that is the end of a millennium with the irrational fears that it arouses, but really a profound break with the times and with a secular crisis of global society.
The collapse of the Soviet model of state led economy based first analysts and theorists the view that the old conflict system would be solved once and for all. The Western paradigm, liberal, individualistic, entrepreneurial and market-oriented would have achieved the historic victory absolute. However, the global reality tells a very different story. The transformation of the ancient state economies into market economies is, in general terms, failed. On the contrary, a serious structural crisis reached in the meantime, the western metropolis. And the alternative of eternal death, the other pole of modern ideologies, it has not led to peace under the banner of individualism shaped the commodity-form and the total market. The capitalist way of life is too one-dimensional, the western market too destructive ideology too weak because this system can exist without an opposite pole. Therefore, the Western paradigm based on market economy could not fill the void left by the economy and ideology related to the state. Instead it was the pseudo-fundamentalism or nationality to occupy the space of the alternative missing: far more dangerous and unpredictable than it had ever been the state socialism. Fundamentalism is the deserved punishment for the hubris market economy as well as the failure of socialism or statist pole, planner, collectivism of the modern era.
Looking at past history it had become apparent as the economy and state socialism were not in any way, two opposing forces outside the economy of the western market. As both poles of a magnetic field or an electric battery not only mutually exclusive but require each other resulting therefore complementary, the same applies to the positions opposite of modernity. Market and State, money and power, economics and politics, capitalism and socialism are not real alternatives, but the two poles of the same and only "field" of historical modernity. This also applies to the dualism between capital and labor. As these poles can be conflicting, they, for their nature, can not exist for themselves until there is a "field" that made them historical in their opposition. This "field" in general, is the commodity producing system of modernity, the commodity-form total yield, the constant transformation of abstract labor in cash and therefore the procedures of the "conversion value," the abstract world of economizing .
It 's easy to understand how, in this system, both poles of capital and labor, market and state capitalism and socialism should always exist as it is the disguise, and its historical weight of the two poles. The economy was the equally full of Soviet-style total economic liberalism (as in the thought of Friedrich August von Hayek or Milton Friedman) appear only as the extremes of a spectrum of ideologies, economic policies and related forms of reproduction that overall all refer to the same reference system that is the commodity-form of the company. This means that the state planning more thrust can operate only in the forms of the market that the categories of goods and money, as has always been known to be the case of the Soviet economy. Conversely even the most extreme radicalism of the market can not exist without its polar state political. On the reverse is true in any market economy a "Law of increasing share of the state and its activities" made for the first time already in 1863 by economist Adolph Wagner. In its essential that law has since been confirmed by the actual structural development. The neo-liberal ideologues see in this the "original sin socialist" within capitalism. This is senseless because it is not an original sin but of a systemically influenced structural development. However, it is correct to speak of the presence, always in the market economy of socialism and market economy under socialism socialism for instance if we are more or less drastic economic-state (the concept of State socialism is therefore entirely appropriate for the Soviet economy which, despite its Marxist ideological legitimacy, it is much closer to Lassalle, Marx Rodbertus or Wagner).
The "theory of convergence" in the 50s had already thought about this problem and had drawn the conclusion that a mutual, phased approach of the two blocks systemic. And being a bit 'neoliberal mitigated the euphoria after 1989, returning to be hearing voices that warn about the radicalism of unilateral market. It would be much more useful than, say, a "right mix" of market and state. So we can witness a spectacle bizarre: in the same way that socialists and Keynesians have become more or less, and neo-liberal monetarists, on the other hand they are becoming more or less Keynesian. Even in the U.S. has emerged a new trend represented by the economists Paul Romer (Berkeley) and Richard Freeman (Harvard) who sees in an excessive difference in income, caused by the radical neo-liberalism a threat to economic growth and requires some form of compensatory action by the state. Think so too neoliberal governments of Chile and Mexico worried, among other things, the rebellion in Chiapas and dangerous social degradation, forced to respond through social programs of government intervention. The same goes for the reformers who want to introduce a market economy in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Even the World Bank under the pressure of the crisis has begun to integrate so cosmetic, his radical program geared to a market economy with "initiatives to support" social and ecological interests can not be achieved without government intervention.
E 'therefore possible that after the unilateral socialism or Keynesianism on the one hand and the equally radical one-sided market neoliberalism has come forward to a convergence that encompasses both a "middle way" in the theoretical and practical? The question concerns the possibility that this paradigm can be rather weak at the head of the secular structural crisis. This raises the question whether a "right mix" of the market and the state can determine a reasonably balanced development of the system. It 'also possible that, in reality, the field of historic town centers of state and market, economy and politics that is the common framework of the modern system of producer goods has come to its absolute limits. Therefore we have to ask many other, far more fundamental issues that can not be made with the traditional analytical tools, much less with an emulsion of eclectic therapies that have so far not each other.
2. The economic functions of the modern state
Why is the role of the state has increased to the point in time, even in market economies of the West in spite of the official ideology? Basically we can identify five levels or areas in which the modern state operates and which are all from the complex dynamics inherent in a market economy. In other words, the more the market economy is structurally expanded, embracing the social reproduction in its entirety and becoming a modus vivendi universal, the more the State would in turn broaden its range. This is a report mutual inevitable.
The first level is the one legal, the process of "regulation in the form of law." The more progressed the development of market economy and its monetary relations abstract, the weaker it became the cohesive force of the pre-modern and traditional forms of relationship and the more actions and social relations were to be translated into the abstract form of law and thus be codified in law. All men without exception, including the immediate producers, should act more like modern subject of law, because every relationship is transformed into a contractual relationship modeled on the exchange of goods. The State thus becomes legislate in a car service learning, and the more you multiply the relations in the form of goods or money is needed more laws and implementing regulations. As a result it also thickens the apparatus of the state because the legal regulation should be checked and put into practice. The nature of this process is not completely "non economic" because the administrative apparatus in a permanent expansion must be funded . The continuing growth of the process of legal regulation itself requires an equivalent growth of the financial burden from the state. Even the mere regulation by law is not free of charge.
The second level in which the State must operate in increasingly is related to the problems of social and ecological system derived from the market economy. Through the history of modernity are witnessing not only the disappearance of the traditional relations but also to the obligations in respect of its social group and of later generations. Instead of local social structures, personal, family and natural education of children, to care for sick and needy, for the livelihood of the elderly, should gradually take over other national-type structures, impersonal, public, consistent with reports of goods and money. Only the State and not the market can deal of those tasks, this is because the market as such has no feeling, no organ for those stages of human existence that go beyond the incessant process of transformation of work in cash or by their nature are not compatible with it. The sphere of the state naturally differs from one country to another depending on the degree of development, its history and its position in the global market and is regulated in a more or less marked but its secular growth in relation to 'expansion of market conditions is an indisputable fact. The same applies to the social problems resulting from the changes and the cycles of the market economy. The modernization is not a transition from one phase to another static stance phase, but the transition from a static to a dynamic form of society. The modernization is thus a process of permanent change, which makes a mess every time the entire reproductive structure. Both the business cycle as the "creative destruction" of entire industries - as Joseph Schumpeter described as somewhat 'euphemistic periodicals structural collapse - again and again create the problem of mass unemployment. Not only children, illness and old age must be reproduced in whole or in part the activity of the state in a world entirely legal and the monetary regulated but also the gap between competitive market processes on the one hand and the human capacity to adapt other. The change of status and housing or the installation of new branches of industry in place of old are factors that evolve more slowly than the "liberation" of labor power through processes of rationalization, recession and decommissioning. The social problem of unemployment can therefore be set at least a little 'ultimately only through government intervention. The social processes caused by modernity, just as that of legal regulation, require additional assets of the state and therefore an increase in financial needs of the latter.
In recent decades, social issues have been joined by green. Even against these sense organs of the market are completely inadequate. The money is inherently abstract and indifferent to the sensitive content of things and abstract rationality company aimed at the minimization of costs does not only fall outside the social costs but also environmentally friendly. This is because the nature of its very essence is not a legal entity, and because of this can be treated as a waste dump for the systemic costs. The natural substrates common with difficulties can only find a place in the shape of the market. The air, water (groundwater, rivers, oceans) and the climate will not allow themselves to submit to the scarcity of economic relations and represent market prices in order to be accessible only to a question with adequate purchasing power. The fundamentals of the natural world is ultimately good for everyone or for all or unbearable. In addition, the processes are long-term ecological degradation and develop through several generations and the time horizon of the market is only ever short of breath. Finally, the outsourcing of corporate environmental costs can be internalized by the state only with difficulty through taxes or other measures, as global competition means that the taxation within the confines of the nation becomes an absurdity in practical terms. Even ecological costs resulting must ultimately be borne by the State with the creation of special institutions, with the result that its scope and its application for financial stretch further.
The third level of the growing activities of the state is represented by aggregates infrastructure: construction of roads and some transport, energy and communications, training and education (schools, universities), scientific institutions, sewer and garbage collection , so health care system. all these infrastructure sectors have developed hand in hand with the increasing industrialization and scientification as factors of production necessary for a total production of goods. These aggregates do not represent production of goods subject to the dictates of the market but rather the infrastructure conditions of production of industrial goods and scientification. These inputs general, for society as a whole, to go into the production company, without being on their part, appropriately represented by rationality company (similar to the natural foundations general). Although the aggregates are infrastructure, not surprisingly, started up (or subsidized) in most cases State almost everywhere and that is why you open an endless altrocampo of social reproduction that fills the activities of the State and its financial needs.
The fourth level of government or state economy is the entrance on the scene first hand of the state as entrepreneur producer of goods that is operator of production for the market. The state as a contractor or even in the most extreme form of state socialism represented as "real entrepreneur total" is certain of itself 'is a paradox because, in this way the pole state political attempts to annex the entire "field" of modernity and to deny its pole systemic antagonist, but not on the other hand, to overcome the system as such. This paradox is ultimately destructive to the system, but can not be criticized by the "unique perspective" of the system since it was originated and continues to originate from its real contradictions. The state-contractor is found primarily in the companies' modernization of recovery "that is, those companies that entered late in the history of the modern system of producer goods. This is not accidental, since in many countries, only the state machine could carry out the attempt to reunite with the most developed countries through the centralized collection of "abstract labor" (Marx). But even in the most ancient nations of modernity, according to the specificity of their history, there are still traces of the state as an industrial entrepreneur, especially in France (eg Renault) and in Italy with his still huge industrial complexes.
Despite the general and predominant ideology of privatizing the state enterprise was poorly reduced globally after 1989. In spite of all the privatization projects are still essential industrial centers owned by the state even in the reformers of Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic). This is particularly true for the rest of Eastern Europe, for regions of the former Soviet Union for the Republic of China and India. Even in Latin America, privatization of state enterprises is only partially successful if you consider the matter in detail. And in Western Europe itself there are problems and contradictions, make it unlikely that a complete privatization of enterprises in state hands. To the extent that damage profit state-owned enterprises will certainly improve the situation of state finances, even if some of these gains is cannibalized because of the cost (often inflated) for the administration and supervision of those undertakings. However, in most cases they are mostly in the business in person, not profitable that must be kept alive for political reasons. Applies in general to the principle: "social (nationalization) of the losses, privatize profits." So are privatized, as a rule, the few state enterprises that give gain, while the state is left with the bulk of its unsold parasitic enterprises, enterprises that are a "bottomless pit".
The fifth and final level of a state is represented by supportive policies and protectionism. Even when the state does not enter directly into the scene as an entrepreneur, it can indirectly influence the process of commodity production even beyond the pure legal regulation, taking up companies formally through private grants and / or defending national entrepreneurs from foreign competition by protectionist measures. From this point of view of state socialism, with its policy of subsidies and the monopoly of foreign trade was merely a special case, extreme, of a more general trend, that even in Western capitalist countries of the commodity producing system has taken enormous proportions. From Napoleon's continental blockade until the infamous "list punitive" American encounter in the West all conceivable forms of indirect state that entrepreneurship, or this "sophistication of the market." All the old industrial states of the West today heavily subsidize The steel industry and mining and shipbuilding. And the massive bureaucracy of the European Agricultural hypertrophic to the point of absurdity, goes even further than the late state socialism. Although the globalization of markets has made it almost impossible to any form of national self-sufficiency or "block" (for example at the level of the triad of U.S., Japan, EU), continues much more within the GATT and the WTO " World economic war "(Edward Luttwak). As more states become hostages of the economies and the multinational "question position" pursues them, the stronger (rather than weaker) becomes their tendency to rely on gimmicks with the policy of protectionism and subsidies in this systemic contradiction between the globalized economy on the one hand and playing within the system-nation with other devices of protectionism and subsidy policy. That this global war between positions to represent the state more of a factor-devouring resources can be understood easily. In general we can say that the law of Adolph Wagner, set out one hundred years ago, has good fundamentals, which can eliminate even the current neo-liberalism. It is in fact internal contradictions in the modern system of producer goods which are reproduced on ever higher levels: the more the total market, the more is the total State, as the larger the monetary economy based on goods, the higher the cost estimates, secondary, resulting from the system and also the greater the need and the activities of the state of its finances. In all countries, the state share is estimated today at around 50% of the social product, and everywhere more than half the population is dependent, directly or indirectly by the economy of the state.
3. The non-state political autonomy of the subsystem and the illusion of the primacy of politics
The polar structure, the modern two-tier social system ends Always assume the equivalence with the hierarchy of the two poles of the market and the state or the economy and politics. But although both poles of the "field" can not exist by itself, assuming each of the two opposite, but their rank is not the same. Instead there is a predominance of an economic structure that can sometimes seem outdated in favor of the state political center, but which is restored anew. The idea of \u200b\u200ba fundamental structural hegemony of the market or the economy against the state and politics is often negatively defined as "economism". But it is not in any way as a theoretical error, but a real dominance market against the state political pole. The preponderance of the evidence can be illustrated by a fundamental fact: the State does not have any medium primary control, but depends on the medium of the market that money. The medium of "power," which appears on the State and that in theory is often equated with money, does not have a primary but only secondary importance. This is because all the measures the State should be financed not only the operational measures in the field of law, infrastructure and so on. But also the "power" in more concrete sense of the word that the armed forces. So even the army is an "extra-economic factor" also being subjected to the market because of the problem is funding. The money is thus the medium general and complete (at the same time, the absurd as an abstract end in itself of modernity), which subsumes within itself the state political pole. The State does not, however, has no potential to create money and therefore it is structurally dependent on the fact that bourgeois society earn enough money, "the market" so as to be able to finance the cost of increasing state activity. Only the blind market process, which is also less and less is left in a confined area of \u200b\u200bpolitical sovereignty, a "national economy" in a single state (globalization), "originates" the money through the abstract work and its "implementation". In this way it is established not only the fundamental structural dominance of the market, but also a fundamental contradiction internal systems. The state is in contradiction with itself as a part of its measures and operations have no other purpose than to promote its territory and the market system of production of goods and keep going, but on the other it must "extract" from the process of the money market to finance his activities thus putting limits to the market economy itself, so therefore the State serves its purpose and simultaneously the counter.
This paradox has become clear parallel to the assumption by the entire goods-producing system of social reproduction. The only "regular" State funding is the taxation of income generated directly from the market process (be it, regardless of direct or indirect taxes). But if the preliminary costs, side effects and problems resulting from the production of goods and thus, the necessary state activities, they increase faster than income generated by the market, then the expansion of public finance through the ordinary means of taxation not only threatens to limit the continuation of the market process but also to suffocate. If the State provides that the "fodder" for the "cash cow" of the monetary market through the killing of the cow itself, then the limits of the system are immediately visible.
During the First World War the problem appeared for the first time on a large scale, as it became clear that the management technology of modern war could not be funded by traditional tax instruments. Since then at regular intervals was discussed about the "financial crisis state taxes." Goldscheid Rudolph and Joseph Schumpeter have made this problem theoretically fundamental structural crisis in 1917-1918 in connection with the war economy of the first war, and since then the positions taken around this problem have never ceased to exist throughout the 20th century. It is by no coincidence that the financial problems of "state capitalism" or the 'permanent war economy "has become, the flagship of the western market economy, namely the U.S., the subject par excellence, the question predominant policy, nor is it a coincidence that this problem will always be treated roughly in the same terms in which it formulated Goldscheid and Schumpeter (for example, James O'Connor, 1973).
If the tool adjust the tax fails, the state must use a second instrument which is fundamentally unserious as fallen into oblivion: the debt at isoggetti participating in the national economy. The State is therefore not simply supports more collecting taxes by virtue of its prerogatives of sovereignty and the monopoly of violence, but to lend money from its citizens as a participant in any financial market. Today this mechanism is no longer considered fundamentally reckless, simply discussing the extent to which the state share of the social product can be indebted to still be considered solvent.
However, there is a reason that causes the state debt as precarious and as a result of the crisis. The credit system is not, by its very nature, aimed at financing the state charges. The savings of the company are concentrated in the banking system as capital money to be lent to the productive capital in exchange for the payment of interest. In this way a capitalist society is mobilized to the processes of exploitation and accumulation an amount of money that could be used by their owners for that purpose. But if money is borrowed for consumption instead of production to enhance production or whether the development fails, then it does not achieve its purpose and the loan becomes sooner or later "Insane." When this happens on a large scale, we face a crisis in commercial banking and, finally, to a banking crisis.
The state credit is used but mostly not for the purpose of enhancing production, but for the multiple uses of government consumption, which is never a luxury but a necessity systemic (but be productive in the sense of promotion). So ends the state credit for producing the same economically on a commercial disaster that leads to claims "insane" because the money-capital was actually used for consumption and not for producing capital assets. This development also has a flip side: As more capital is money loaned to the State all the more saving is transformed from simple rights in real money capital to the state: it becomes more and more savings in reality nothing more than government debt. However, they are treated "as if it were income derived from interest on capital employed productively, while all this money has gone a long time and forever in Hades of government consumption. That is why Marx spoke about these state titles, with right of "fictitious capital . A large part of social reproduction and the social wealth supposedly accumulated in the form of "monetary assets" is now based, worldwide, in "fictitious capital".
Such a constellation of the banking system ultimately can only lead to the collapse of the financial system that is more or less to a sudden "devaluation" of the "fictitious capital". From the First World War on what has actually occurred several times in several countries, and today we may approximate to a new colossal shock devaluation worldwide. In fact, in recent decades the "fictitious capital" of the state credit (as, indeed, the other form of "fictitious capital" the speculation business with related forms of a "casino capitalism derivatives") has expanded more and more frightening as he had never seen before. Although the financial collapse of state credit can be a process that lasts a long time it will still be the undisputed result of a process over. And although the state can make use of its sovereign prerogatives to declare "debtor infallible," this will happen only through the expropriation of its citizens and the collapse of the national finances.
But there is also a direct and short-term problem related to the permanent lighting of public debts. Since the State is in the credit as it enters into competition as a factor in the demand for money capital and productive business with the applicants. Ignition credit too loose, that empty, so to say, the financial market and therefore may have a negative effect on the economy, growth and even the entire national economy equal to that of a too high taxation. If the state has already drained the savings of the company and / or want to prevent negative repercussions of excessive demand on its state banking system, then it can use the tool of 'foreign debt , "assumed its solvency, using international financial markets. In this way, the fundamental problem is not resolved, but only transformed with new, additional potential risk internationally. So many countries in Eastern Europe, Latin America and Africa have already fallen into the trap of debt. " But even some major Western industrial states now depend on external indebtedness, primarily the U.S., which now must honor the most colossal foreign debt of the world. The global financial system is now in a condition even more precarious due to the international debt of all the states.
When not working anymore and the State can no longer finance or with taxes or with the collection of receivables within or abroad, will remain only as a last resort the issue of banknotes: the State will ensure that its central bank creates by decree "unproductive money" out of nothing. In doing so the State will retain the power to create money against the laws of the market system, that is ignored by the power pole as the dominant political structure of the economic pole. The punishment that follows immediately is how well you know, in the form of hyperinflation. Since the end of World War I, this phenomenon has occurred periodically following the creation of state money unproductive, and today is a structural condition lasting for a growing number of countries. Against all the illusions about the "primacy of politics" has long been demonstrated that through the rule of money and politics are basically dependent on the market and economics.
Although all the structural forms and problems of this dependence are known, however, stubbornly retains the idea that the pole state political hierarchy is equal to or "ultimately" have a regulative competence to the economy and money . And although the national and international financial systems during the 20th century have been repeatedly and severely disrupted and are now even more unstable, it is hoped, in general the manner of the gamblers that the global producer of goods with its giant financial superstructure will continue to operate "in some way" despite its logical contradictions, for the simple reason that until now has always survived "in some way." It denies the possibility of an absolute limit. Even those countries where the financial system is already in disrepair, bring in more new construction "plans" economic and financial, which should finally overcome the disaster. But no economic policy will never change the non-autonomy of the state for money.
4. The crisis of the secular state political control
The barrier structural system of the entire "field" of modernity, of which there is no trace, so to speak, in the speeches of political science and daily business as usual in the academic life becomes clearly visible to a historical analysis of the modernization process considered in its entirety. In complete disagreement with the neo-liberal ideology is possible to show that at the end of the 20th century, the systemic costs of a market economy are beginning to exceed its performance in an absolute and irreversible. The problem, a virtual time, periodic, so the maintenance costs of the system, as reflected in the activities of the State, have come to devour the substance becomes real and lasting. For this reason, therefore, a limit historical, absolute system has now been reached and it definitely took the phenomenal forms of a slow and progressive crisis for the eligibility of all functional areas necessary to the system.
little use complaining, as he would an old-fashioned "good family man," about the "mania of the state to borrow" as they like to do the usual political conservatives and populists. The criticism of "excessive costs of the state" blindly accept the views of money and completely ignores the fact that the costs of the State are not the result of poor financial management of the latter, but reflect the level of of modern civilization. Political corruption, a phenomenon witnessed today in all countries, not the cause but a consequence of the crisis. There are definitely some hawks market economy ready to clear the level of civilization of the masses of people no longer profitable due to poor financial viability and to abandon them to barbarism. The hope is probably to continue to implement a capitalist reproduction restricted to a minority overall in a few "islands of normalcy." But it is a double illusion. First, there would result from barbarism-boomerang effect that would result in the conversion of cost savings on social programs, infrastructure and so on. in costs for "security" rising to astronomical levels. In addition, the civilizational level of infrastructure, education and science, health and public transport, waste disposal etc.. is not a luxury but a necessary factor to maintain function in the capitalist accumulation itself. Scientification a production network that uses highly sophisticated procedures can not float a long time on an ocean of illiteracy, poverty, violence, garbage, disease and neglect. If the current level of civilization is not more funding, this can only mean that the internal contradiction of the system has reached its full maturity. The market economy Western has produced potential that overwhelm and does not leave locked up in more modern forms of the commodity producing system.
The paradox that the cost of the system, given the current level of productivity and scientification, overlook the load limits of the redevelopment process also can not be solved by using the idea of \u200b\u200b"privatization" ideology so dear neoliberal. If the infrastructure of the system cost more than the system can make, then there is no way to avoid this misery simply by a change in the legal form since the problem from the point of view does not change substantially. This also applies to all those spheres where the state, against the logic of the system, takes the direct production of goods for the market. If even in this sector, the privatization proceeds everywhere so broken, this is due to sound economic reasons, that can not be attributed in any case to a "false socialist ideology." Certainly the production can be made "more efficient" in the sense of promoting profitability, management by a private, market-oriented. But "efficiency" means rationalization, closure of entire industrial sectors, mass withdrawals. Countries such as Russia, India and China should quickly leave the pavement more than half of their population. The result may be the only civil war. If state enterprises are no longer eligible, and if, simultaneously, the privatization leads the system to collapse even more then we are facing a classic situation of paralysis.
This is particularly valid in the infrastructure sector. If it is contrary to the system that the state (through necessity) does work, first-person enterprises for the production of goods even more counterproductive is the symmetric assumption on the part of state functions to private enterprises in infrastructure, treated the same way as common goods produced. The essence of the infrastructure lies in its character input for society as a whole, which must cover the whole territory, in order to fulfill its purpose. But when the aggregates are subjected to the infrastructure economic relationship based on scarcity and operate only in relation to an application for direct marketing, with purchasing power, they lose their status as general conditions of commodity production. It 's impossible to privatize the inputs of the whole society at the same time without serious damage to the process of valorisation of capital. First of all inputs such would become too expensive, and secondly, they would never available in sufficient quantity, at a place and right time, even for applicants with purchasing power. The privatization of the infrastructure in the world interohanno conducted so far confirmed this problem. In Argentina enterprises in urban areas can no longer find enough workers because public transport has been dismantled or become too expensive so that the employees of the suburbs can no longer afford the trip to get to work. In the U.S., Japanese investors complained of not being able to involve the people in the local production (local content) because the local workforce had the necessary power to operate machines too complicated. In England, the industry complained the weakness of the telephone network after the privatization was to make it viable, so that officials on mission should be equipped with external radio-telephones at very high cost. German investors in Hungary discovered with dismay that the benefits due to low wages were offset by the continuous interruption in power supply and that, in practice, they had to build a power plant on their own. For all aggregates infrastructure is the rule: the more they are privatized, the more they become scarce and expensive. No economy can long endure this fact. Whether the State is free, selling, infrastructure, comes forward to the time of regret it. But the shear
systemic crisis rages also the process of development itself. Not only the activities of the State, which is essential, it becomes too expensive, but also the valuation of capital as such has ceased all over the world, one cycle after another. Reproduction in accordance with the laws of the market economy seems to wear his own foundation. This development is so far ignored, even by the theories of the left. Generally dominates the view that sooner or later, the accumulation of capital will return to put the wings by increasing productivity. This argument is based, however, on a colossal misunderstanding. The core the problem is that due to increased productivity and rationalization generates less value per product per unit of capital, since the "value" is a relative concept, as measured over a certain level of productivity (historically increasing ) within a given reference system of capitalism. The capitalist process threatens its very existence, while minimizing its real substance (abstract labor). If the contradiction implicit in this systemic crisis could be overcome in the past it had only the compensation mechanism which is in expansion mode of production as such. Already made the rationalization Henry Ford had drastically decreased the amount of labor per unit of product. But in this way, for example, the product became more economical car, allowing them to become part of mass consumption and the automotive market expanded at once. It takes less work for the individual car, but he employed much more than before because of sovraproporzionale increased production of automobiles. The Fordist rationalization lived thus a continuous expansion of markets, the mass work, wages and mass consumption of mass. It was basically a process in which local production sectors, non-capitalist, the domestic economy of subsistence goods were sucked by the logic of corporate rationality. Today, this historic reserve is exhausted, as illustrated by the German sociologist Burkart Lutz in his research. Meanwhile, the rationalization postfordistica based on microelectronics and the globalization of markets for goods, money, work, has made considerable amount of work no longer profitable, so the old historic compensation mechanism starts to crumble. In other words, for the first time in the history of capitalism the speed with which to rationalize away jobs over the expansion of the market. Productivity rises higher and faster, while the enlargement of the mode of production as such has virtually ceased. Therefore hope a new advance of accumulation is rather naive. The fundamental contradiction of this society is no longer a cyclical phenomenon but structural: the transformation of relying sull'inesausta Amount of abstract labor in money, but had conducted itself at a point where it can not be mobilized enough these quantities on a profitable level of production standards and constitutes itself this is no longer a cyclical phenomenon but structural. But the more difficult it becomes much less the actual accumulation financed and state credit and at least the state can borrow, the greater became his duties due to the structural crisis accumulation. Modernity based on the production of goods is so entangled in this vicious circle.
In this context it should also criticize the "theory of regulation" that starts from models of accumulation and political rule cultural configuration. According to this theory, one must assume infinite capacity for adaptation "of capitalism by passing through an accumulation model to another. This theoretical model is reminiscent of a little 'and the myth of eternal return, to the extent that it is Marxist inspired, could cause us to speak of a "Buddhist Marxist." If we examine the history of modernity as a whole this schematic appears at least singular. Of course, the political regulation plays an increasingly important role in the system of market economy, a growing need for systemic state functions, such as Adolph Wagner had already discovered. But we do not look at all a story of unending crisis, and prosperity "models of accumulation." Indeed, there is, strictly speaking, a single complete model of accumulation and regulation, which is simultaneously the first and last: the Fordist. Previously, in the 19th century, the capitalist production could not continue to operate fully on its own conditions and even the crisis were still mediated by the pre-industrial agrarian crisis and the overwhelming majority of the population, even in more developed countries, was not involved or was only partly in the process of entrepreneurial rationality. And how can there be a "later" if you can produce more with less and less work and, consequently, there is less and less purchasing power? A global prosperity in the future market will be achieved only if, like a sleight of hand, capital accumulates without work. "Jobless growth" is an illusion that can be maintained with difficulty (to the financial collapse) by creating a worldwide "fictitious capital", which does not come from actual production processes.
A pure accumulation model political "is even less likely." theory of regulation "seems to stir up political nature illusions from accumulation of theoretical arguments. But first it should be a new cycle of accumulation could then be adjusted only politically, not the other way. But no policy has never magically extracted from a new cylinder, a roll as it was a bunny. not the basic laws of capitalist production of goods are subject to political regulation, but only the forms in which it manifests itself. Fordist model of living that the accumulation based on a systemic process with no subject, could, while the control policy could operate only on a secondary level. If social reproduction is now squeezed between the market and the state must come up with something better than "waiting for Godot" or the next "economic miracle" of the commodity producing system; miracle that will never come again.
