Anarchy in Capitalism

The answer to this question lies in the anarchic nature of the capitalist system. While production proceeds on a social basis (ie in factories, building sites and other enterprises in which large numbers of people co-operate) the goods produced by society become the private properly of the capitalist owners who organise production according to the criteria of profitability.

There is no common social interest which allows steady, planned economic growth. Monopoly capitalistry to get maximum profits by pushing up prices and restricticting production, the government increases taxation and alters the social distribution of income, professional associations put up their charges and workers' unions attempt to win higher wages by taking industrial action against their employers. Because society under the domination of the monopoly capitalists is characterised by thousands of contending interests there is no stability in the relationship between production and consumption and between the production of different types of goods. Some goods are in short supply, while others are in excess. At times there is too much demand for the amount of goods produced (and hence inflation increases) while at other times there is a general oversupply of goods and a crisis of overproduction gets under way.

The periodic crises of overproduction that occur under capitalism result from the generally anarchic nature of the capitalist system and not from any permanent and inherent gap between purchasing power and production as is claimed by the 'A + B Theorem'. If the theorem were correct, then none of the booms that have occurred under capitalism could ever have done so!

Capitalist economies would have been in a constant state of depression. In fact if the A + B Theorem was a genuine law of capitalism, capitalism would have represented no advance on the feudal system, and we would still be trying to scratch a subsistence living out of the soil today!

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