And yet this never came to pass. There was never a workers’ revolution that overthrew the system – at least not on a global scale. The reason why was that contrary to Marx’s predictions capitalism could ‘fix’ – both spatially and technologically – the very problems it generated. The ‘spatial fix’ is what underpins contemporary globalisation, characterised by the global distribution and relocation of production. This was one of the solutions the bourgeoisie adopted to counter rising worker militancy in Europe and North America after the late 1960s, and is the background for contemporary discourses of ‘competitive ’ labour markets in a world ‘racing to the bottom’. It is also why more cars are produced in Mexico, Thailand and Brazil than nations which previously dominated the industry such as France, Italy and the United Kingdom. The spatial fix is always only temporary, of course, and has recently reemerged in the context of rising wages in China. Once more we see production relocating to wherever labour is cheap and profits easier to realise.
The ‘technological fix’ is diferent, with Marx consistently clear that technological innovation is an inherent feature of capitalism. His explanation, just as it would be for later voices such as Milton Friedman and Joseph Schumpeter, was that it was propelled by competition between capitalists. The imperative to compete means capitalists must always find cheaper, more eficient ways of producing commodities – often substituting machines for human labour – while also ofering improvements on goods and services available to consumers. It was this imperative which governed the immense expansion of railways, the emergence of the factory system and guided constant innovation until the present day. It would become the iron law of the prevailing economic model within the Second Disruption – market capitalism.
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chaos under heaven