Advanced capitalism is characterized by contradictions, namely the emergence of conditions -- through the very success of capitalism -- which are fundamentally antagonistic to capitalism itself, intensify with time, and cannot be resolved within the capitalist framework. In short, the development of capitalism produces changes that call into question the social desirability of the drive for profits. Raw capitalism becomes incompatible with the further development of human potential and capacities. Such contradictions include:
The idea of the ‘dialectic’ emerged out of 18th-century thought (notably Hegel) as a back-and-forth between opposing aims until the poles are transfigured by the conflict into a new whole, which in turn yields a new struggle of opposites necessitating another struggle ending in another transformation, and so on. For Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the dialectic process had a necessary and desirable end -- socialism -- which would be achieved when the forces of capitalism had exhausted their potential by fusing the economic, cultural, political and social spheres. (‘The bourgeoisie’ (ie capitalists), Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto (1848), ‘creates a world after its own image’.) Specifically, capitalism would fuse the fragmentary elements of economy and society by means of big enterprise, mass data and centralization to such an extent that the ‘shell’ that had earlier contained private property relations ‘must inevitably decay’ or be removed by ‘artificial means’, ie, revolution.
The Marxian interpretation of reality that views matter as the sole subject of change and all change as the product of a constant conflict between opposites arising from the internal contradictions inherent in all events, ideas, and movements.
political and historical events result from the conflict of social forces and are interpretable as a series of contradictions and their solutions. The conflict is believed to be caused by material needs.
‘The bourgeoisie’ (ie capitalists), Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto (1848), ‘creates a world after its own image’.
Following this massive feat of homogenization, Marxist theory asserted, it would no longer be possible to compensate for capitalism’s internal contradictions by adjustments within the system, and these would therefore burst out into the open, an eventuality that would ultimately give rise to socialism.
For Marx, Engels and Lenin, capitalist homogenisation was an undeniably ruthless process, but also necessary as a prerequisite to the socialist dream of achieving true equality, beyond class antagonism.
Before yielding to the longed-for ‘higher social-economic order’, however, capitalism would fuse the fragmentary elements of economy and society by means of big enterprise, mass data and centralisation to such an extent that the ‘shell’ that had earlier contained private property relations ‘must inevitably decay’ or be removed by ‘artificial means’, ie, revolution. Following on the heels of this great capitalist homogenisation, then, would come the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, when the last would be first and the first would be last until there was no more ‘first’ and ‘last’, and true equality was achieved.
The militant ideology of Western economic totalitarianism paved the way for the equally militant neo-ideological delusions. The end of the state capitalist era and its ideas were used as an occasion to bring critical theory to silence. The contradictions of capitalist logic were not allowed to be talked about, they and the questions of social emancipation beyond the commodity producing society were declared to be irrelevant. With the supposed final victory of the market and competitive principle, the intellectual ability of reflection of Western societies came to an end. The people of this world were to become identical with capitalist functions, even though the majority was already marked as "redundant.
The universal law of capital accumulation, one of the basic economic laws of capitalism, determines the polarization of capitalist society and the progressively deepening social gulf between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The accumulation of capital causes the growth of wealth among the capitalist class and the worsening of the position of the proletariat.