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Unpopular capitalism

Marxist Analysis · 2000-09-11

Core Argument

The article argues that the long post-war boom in the United States and Britain, far from producing popular contentment with capitalism, has generated a deepening anti-corporate mood across broad layers of society. This is not a temporary blip but the early expression of a fundamental radicalisation that will, with the onset of the next economic downturn, transform into a conscious pro-socialist outlook. The central claim is that capitalism's own success in extracting surplus value — through intensification of labour, stagnant real wages relative to productivity, and the naked pursuit of profit at the expense of public safety and service quality — has produced the conditions for its own growing unpopularity. The article insists that this mood is not confined to the radicalised youth or the traditional working class but cuts across generations, geography, and income groups, including significant sections of the middle class.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is grounded in Marx's proposition that "social being determines social consciousness." The article deploys the concept of relative surplus value — the intensification of labour without proportionate increase in wages — as the material basis for the changing mood. It draws on the Marxist understanding that capitalism's periodic booms do not resolve its internal contradictions but deepen them, preparing the ground for sharper class confrontations. The argument sits firmly within the Trotskyist tradition's insistence that the working class remains the revolutionary subject, even in periods of capitalist expansion, and that the traditional organisations of labour (unions, reformist parties) will be transformed and retransformed by events. The article implicitly rejects the notion that the "New Economy" or "Information Age" has fundamentally altered the dynamics of capitalist exploitation, treating call centres and telecoms as sites of Fordist and Taylorist production methods applied to the service sector. The analysis also draws on the Marxist understanding of the state as an instrument of capital, evidenced by the treatment of privatisation, corporate-political sleaze, and the Blair government's pro-capitalist policies as expressions of a single system.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is written in the context of the longest post-war boom in the US (1992–2000) and the early years of the Blair government in Britain. It cites specific data points:

  • US: Business Week poll showing nearly three-quarters of Americans believe business has gained too much power; 73% think top executives are overpaid; 40 million workers would vote for a union if given the chance (double the number a decade earlier); productivity up 17.9% while wages and benefits outpaced inflation by only 7.6% since 1992.
  • UK: Financial Times/Mori poll showing only a quarter of those surveyed thought large company profits were a good thing (down from half in 1969); 75% support for rail renationalisation after the Ladbroke Grove disaster; Joseph Rowntree Foundation survey showing job insecurity at its highest since WWII, with 60% reporting increased pace of work and two-thirds regularly working longer than basic hours.
  • Industrial action: The Verizon strike in the US as a breakthrough in organising the "New Economy"; the wave of unofficial strikes at Royal Mail (accounting for nearly half of all recorded stoppages in Britain); the BT dispute over the 285-second call limit; the Plymouth council workers' strike over stress and workload.

The article identifies the bombing of Yugoslavia as a marker of a new period of global instability and argues that the coming economic downturn — which it treats as inevitable — will have devastating social and political effects.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a snapshot of a particular conjuncture (2000–2005) and leaves several threads open:

  • The trajectory of the anti-corporate mood: Does it translate into sustained working-class organisation, or does it dissipate into reformist dead-ends (e.g., the anti-globalisation movement, NGO-ism, single-issue campaigns)? Later IDOM articles on the anti-war movement, the 2008 crash, and the rise of Corbynism in Britain and Sanders in the US can be read as developments of this argument.
  • The role of the trade unions: The article notes the Verizon victory and the Royal Mail wildcats but does not fully theorise the relationship between spontaneous militancy and the need for revolutionary leadership. This is developed in other IDOM pieces on trade union strategy and the crisis of the labour bureaucracy.
  • The political expression of the radicalisation: The article mentions Al Gore adopting anti-corporate rhetoric but does not analyse the fate of social-democratic parties as vehicles for this mood. Later Against the Stream episodes and IDOM articles on Syriza, Podemos, and the Labour Party under Corbyn take this up.
  • The inevitability of downturn: The article asserts the coming economic crisis but does not provide a detailed analysis of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall or the specific mechanisms of overaccumulation. These are developed in other IDOM theoretical articles (e.g., on Marx's law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall).

Connections

  • Marx, Capital Volume 1: The concept of relative surplus value and the intensification of labour is directly drawn from Marx's analysis of the working day and the production of surplus value.
  • Trotsky, The Transitional Programme: The article's insistence that the working class will move through its traditional organisations and that these will be transformed echoes Trotsky's analysis of the crisis of leadership and the need for a revolutionary party.
  • IDOM articles on the 2008 crash and its aftermath: The argument that the boom prepares the ground for sharper class conflict is developed in later analyses of the Great Recession, austerity, and the resurgence of strikes.
  • Against the Stream episodes on the "New Economy" and the labour movement: These episodes develop the critique of the idea that the Information Age has rendered Marxist analysis obsolete.
  • The Financial Times article "Unpopular Capitalism" (11 September 2000): The IDOM article takes this ruling-class warning as its point of departure, using it to demonstrate that even bourgeois strategists recognise the danger.

Key Quotes

  1. "The growing intensification of labour, which Marx described as relative surplus value, is having a colossal effect on the outlook of the working class, and also the middle class."

  2. "In a recent Mori poll for the Financial Times, only a quarter of those surveyed thought the profits of large companies a good thing. This compared to half in 1969."

  3. "If today's anti-corporate backlash is more low-key than the counterculture of the 1960s, it may be even more dangerous for Corporate America... Today, those Americans angry at corporations cut across generations, geography, and even income groups."

  4. "The willingness of telecom unions to take action - not simply over wages and conditions, but over the future of hi-tech unionism - is opening a new chapter for American labour. It is a clear answer to those who wrote off the working class following the decline of heavy manufacturing industry."

  5. "Under the banner of 'competition' and 'free trade', the capitalists are blackmailing workers to engage in a race to the bottom, where there is no finishing line."

  6. "The anti-capitalist mood will give way to a pro-socialist outlook as events shake the consciousness of the masses. This whole episode is a preparation for the entry once again of the working class onto the stage of history."