The endless drive to pump out surplus value in order to further pump out yet more surplus value, of accumulation in order to further accumulate, knows no bounds. As capitalism emerged in parts of north west Europe, it was compelled to stretch out its tentacles to encompass the whole earth, subjecting ever more living labour to it:
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-suficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal interdependence of nations.72
What stands out from Marx's analysis is precisely what has been missing from mainstream economics since his time-a sense of the mass forward rush of capitalism.73 His model provides, as no other has, an account of a system that had expanded to fill most of Western Europe and North America by the time of his death in 1883-and expanded further to fill the whole globe in the 20th century. But that is not all. His model was not only of a self-expanding system, but of one whose expansion is based upon the interplay of contradictory forces that finds expression in the crisis and the downward pressure on the rate of profit. The expansion of the system simultaneously leads to a massive growth in the productive forces-the capacity of humanity to produce its livelihood-and of the transformation of these into destructive forces through the crippling of people's lives.
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Understanding the System: Marx and Beyond