CAPITALISM TODAY AND THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE

Hans G. EHRBAR (University of Utah)

Capitalist production generates tendencies towards a unified world market, with labor equalized world-wide, a single world currency, and a world government containing the antagonisms between a world proletariat and capitalists. But there are also powerful countertendencies. The states of the developed capitalist nations deliberately prevent the equalization of labor by imposing restrictions on trade and technology transfer. National currencies, especially the US dollar, have usurped the role of world money. The working classes in the rich nations are co-opted in imperialist robbery and bribed in order to avert the menace of the socialist counterexample.

Other factors have entered the stage more recently. The information revolution has accelerated the pace of globalization and opened up more avenues to struggle against the system. The ever more visible effects of global warming create an increasingly anitcapitalist public even in the richest nations. The USA is literally turning into a "loose cannon" since it cannot prevent the loss of its economic world dominance but has a firmly entrenched military superiority.

This article analyzes these processes from the point of view of the labor theory of value, and explore what all this means for the strategy and tactics of anticapitalist struggles.