The current crisis of capitalism

Abstract

From the 1980s onwards, capital and its ideologues, including economists, began to believe that they had found, in practice, a magic formula to guarantee the generation of economic wealth, without the need for the use of human labor. Some even think that capital will end up no longer needing labor to produce wealth and surplus, in order to guarantee the profitability required by capital. Work would, therefore, have lost its centrality; technology, information and the domain of knowledge were elevated to the category of magical beings capable of anything and objects of worship. Finally, capital would no longer need to get its hands dirty in production to realize itself as being capable of, on its own, generating profits, high profits. And, in fact, “financial” capital, in a certain way, was capable of this feat. From the end of the 1970s until now, it has not only dominated the capitalist scenario, but also surpassed productive investments in terms of its ability to appropriate profits.