Compared with feudal relations of production, capitalist relations of production is a new and progressive one. According to the emergence and historical development of capitalism, historical investigation is carried out in stages.
(A) the development of capitalism first experienced the primitive accumulation stage. The primitive accumulation of capital has played an important role in promoting the emergence, development and establishment of capitalism. First of all, primitive accumulation of capital, as a driving force, accelerated the emergence and development of capitalist mode of production and fundamentally disintegrated the economic foundation of feudal society. Secondly, the primitive accumulation of capital broke through the closed state of feudal system and feudal regime; It has opened up a wide range of domestic and foreign markets and made the capitalist economy an open economy. Thirdly, while promoting the development of capitalist mode of production, primitive accumulation of capital also promoted political changes, which eventually led to the bourgeois revolution, and the capitalist system replaced the feudal system.
(2) After the capitalist mode of production is established, it will enter the stage of capitalist free competition. At this stage, with the establishment of capitalist mode of production, natural economy has been transformed into capitalist market economy, which gives a broad place for the law of surplus value to play its role. Driven by the pursuit of more profits, capitalists continue to expand their accumulation, improve technology and management, strive to improve labor productivity and reduce costs, thus promoting the tremendous development of social productivity.
(3) Monopoly capitalism emerged on the basis of free competition capitalism. Because the relations of production must be suitable for the role of the essential law of productive forces, it can also promote the development of productive forces to a certain extent and within a certain range. This is because:
First, productivity is the most active and revolutionary factor in the social mode of production. In the production process, people should constantly accumulate production experience and labor skills, constantly improve labor materials and technological processes, and constantly adjust the combination of human and material factors in production, so as to continuously develop productive forces.
Second, promote competition. Monopoly has not eliminated competition, and the existence of competition is a powerful lever for production development. Any monopoly is regional and timely. In monopoly capitalist countries, there are various forms of competition between monopoly organizations and non-monopoly organizations and between monopoly organizations and non-monopoly organizations. In the international market, it is even more impossible for a national monopoly organization to control the market and exclude competitors for a long time. With the progress of science and technology, new technologies, new processes, new industries and new departments are constantly emerging, and social production is changing with each passing day. Under this condition, in order to maintain its economic and technological advantages, monopoly organizations must also speed up technological progress and vigorously develop production in the competition.
Third, the emergence of monopoly itself has the side of adapting to the requirements of productive forces and promoting their development. Socialized large-scale production needs to be combined in a larger scope for production and management, and the emergence of monopoly organizations has adapted to this requirement to a certain extent. If monopoly organizations want to maintain their technological advantages, they must strengthen scientific research and incorporate it into their own operations. Monopoly organizations have continuously increased investment in scientific research funds and established huge scientific research institutions with a high degree of socialization. The large amount of capital accumulated by huge monopoly organizations has provided financial guarantee for promoting scientific and technological progress. The pursuit of high profits by monopoly capital has become the driving force to promote the development of productive forces.
(4) Capitalism has developed from private monopoly to state monopoly, and the capitalist relations of production have been adjusted as much as possible, so that production and capital are socialized in a wider range, and the state's intervention and regulation of social economy have been strengthened, which has a certain promoting effect on the development of capitalist economy. Its specific performance is:
First, state monopoly capitalism has alleviated the contradiction between production and consumption in the capitalist reproduction movement to a certain extent. After the war, bourgeois countries used economic forecasting methods, economic plans and economic levers (such as taxes and credit) to adjust the total social supply; Using economic means such as distribution policy, tax relief policy, welfare policy and interest rate policy, we will artificially stimulate residents' consumption demand, government consumption demand and private investment demand, expand market circulation capacity, and provide more relaxed conditions for the rapid development of capitalist economy.
Second, to some extent, it suppressed the anarchy inherent in the reproduction of capitalist society. State monopoly capitalism is an economy that combines state power with private monopoly capital. On the one hand, the state actively develops state-owned enterprises, helps private monopoly organizations to expand the scale of enterprises, and adopts high-tech means to manage enterprises, thus expanding the scope of organized and planned functions within enterprises. On the other hand, the state actively uses economic, administrative and legal means to regulate and intervene in the national economy, and directly arranges or adjusts the important proportional relations between infrastructure and production departments, emerging industries and traditional industries, material reproduction and economic reproduction, and scientific and technological culture and ecological environment reproduction. All these have reduced the anarchy, economic friction and turbulence of capitalist production to varying degrees and promoted the development of capitalist economy.
Third, the state intervened in the fixed capital renewal process, which eased the fluctuation range of the economic crisis. The periodic large-scale renewal of fixed capital is the material basis of periodic economic crisis in capitalist reproduction. Under the condition of state monopoly capitalism, with the guidance of government direct investment and private investment, the distribution of fixed capital tends to be even in the period of expansion and renewal, which has a certain planning, and has a certain positive effect on changing the form and fluctuation range of capitalist reproduction cycle and preventing the premature occurrence of general economic crisis.
Fourth, state monopoly capitalism makes full use of social adjustment mechanism to create some favorable conditions for capitalist economic development. First of all, the state has increased investment in transportation, communication, energy and other industries through direct investment and other economic adjustment means, providing necessary infrastructure conditions for social and economic development. Secondly, make use of the powerful economic strength of state monopoly capital, guide private monopoly capital to invest in science and technology and education, and provide necessary intellectual support and talent guarantee for social and economic development. Thirdly, state monopoly has the power to surpass general monopoly, and it also plays an important role in coordinating the interests between private monopoly organizations and between private monopoly and non-monopoly components. The state has also eased the domestic labor-capital contradiction to some extent by adjusting the domestic income distribution relationship and increasing employees' wages and social welfare expenditures. In this way, it objectively maintained political stability for a long period after the war and created a favorable political environment for the development of capitalist economy.
Second, the historical limitations of capitalism
From the above analysis, we can see that capitalism has played a very important role in the development of productive forces and promoting social progress in hundreds of years of historical development. Up to now, the development of capitalism still meets the needs of the productive forces of capitalist society to a certain extent. However, we should see that since the establishment of capitalist mode of production, there has been an insurmountable internal contradiction between capitalist productive forces and production relations. However, in the early days of capitalism. These contradictions have not been fully exposed. With the development of productive forces in capitalist society, the contradiction between capitalist relations of production and productive forces is gradually exposed, especially the basic contradiction in capitalist society, that is, the contradiction between socialization of production and private ownership of capitalist means of production, has become increasingly acute in the periodic economic crisis, forcing capitalism to make partial adjustments to its internal relations of production, but this adjustment is limited to the scope of capital relations. So capitalism developed from free competition stage to general monopoly stage. In the stage of general monopoly capitalism, the historical limitations of capitalist mode of production are very obvious. Its negative effects are mainly manifested in:
First of all, the development of private monopoly has intensified the opposition between capital and labor. Monopoly capital replaced individual capital and took the first step in the socialization of capital relations, which made the concentration of production and capital reach a high level. Monopoly capital keeps expanding the scale of production and pursuing monopoly profits far higher than ordinary capital. The source of monopoly profits is still surplus value. It is based on expanding the more cruel exploitation of hired workers. This will inevitably further develop the contradiction between the infinite expansion of production and the demand with the ability to pay, thus leading to the emergence of cyclical economic crisis of overproduction and the destruction of social productive forces.
Second, the development of private monopoly cannot eliminate the contradiction between the organization of individual enterprises and the anarchy of the whole society. With the continuous expansion of the scale of monopoly organizations, it is required to carry out more rigorous organization and management within enterprises. However, monopoly has replaced competition and has not eliminated it. In order to pursue high monopoly profits, various monopoly organizations have launched more intense competition, which will inevitably lead to a more serious anarchy in the production of the whole society.
Third, the development of private monopoly makes the contradiction between the inherent socialization of production and the private possession of means of production in capitalist society more acute. Monopoly capital requires a high concentration of production and capital, on the one hand, making production more socialized; On the other hand, it makes capital more concentrated, forms monopoly capital, replaces private capital with private monopoly capital in the mode of possession of means of production, and makes capitalist private ownership take a more concentrated form of private ownership. This will inevitably lead to more intense conflicts in the basic contradictions of capitalist society.
Fourth, the development of private monopoly will cause the stagnation trend of capitalist production and technological development to a certain extent. This is because: (1) Since high profits can be obtained through monopoly, the original free competition as a driving force for production and technological progress has been reduced to some extent. (2) In order to maintain its monopoly position, monopoly organizations will artificially suppress and hinder the application of new technologies by purchasing patent rights and monopolizing. (3) A large number of capital exports have also caused the development of monopoly capitalist countries to be relatively slow and stagnant.
The limitations exposed by private monopoly capital show that the form of private monopoly organization can no longer meet the needs of capitalist production development, and new adjustments must be made to replace private monopoly with state monopoly.
State monopoly capitalism further sublates the private ownership form of capitalist relations of production. As the possessor of capital and the regulator of production, the state is still bourgeois private ownership in essence, serving monopoly capital. It can not only completely eliminate the opposition between capital and wage labor, but also strive to strengthen this system, which determines that the development of state monopoly capitalism can not only eliminate the basic contradictions and other contradictions of capitalism, but also seriously hinder the further development of social productive forces. Its main performance is:
First of all, it further strengthens the stagnant trend of technological progress, resulting in a huge waste of productivity. Technological progress is a key factor in the development of social productive forces. After the Second World War, although western developed countries invested a lot of financial resources, manpower and material resources, which promoted the rapid development of science and technology, it also caused technological stagnation. Because under the condition of state monopoly, the selection, popularization and application of new technological achievements are mostly realized through monopoly organizations. When the new technological achievements conflict with the short-term interests of monopoly organizations, capitalists will artificially exclude the popularization and application of new technologies; On the other hand, the technological development of bourgeois countries is mostly concentrated on military technology, and the technological progress of civil production departments lags behind the possibility provided by modern scientific and technological revolution, and the development of civil production is relatively slow. At the same time, the existing production capacity of capitalist society is largely idle and the population is relatively surplus. Under the condition of state monopoly, the "chief capitalist" means that on the one hand, the state actively uses the huge capital in its hands to support all kinds of enterprises to expand their reproduction capacity in order to pursue the development of the overall productive forces in capitalist society, on the other hand, it controls the needs of working people with the ability to pay within the scope permitted by capitalist production methods. Although the state has also adopted some income policies to increase the nominal wage income of employed workers, it is far lower than the wealth greatly increased by the bourgeoisie, and the gap is even greater. The two factors of relative overproduction gradually accumulate, and as a result, there will be a frequent backlog of products, closed equipment, laid-off workers, closed production capacity and relative overpopulation, which will intensify the contradiction, resulting in a huge waste of manpower and material resources.
Second, it has caused the stagnation of capitalist economic development. State monopoly capitalism has brought a series of serious side effects in the process of actively regulating macro-economy.
The main manifestations are as follows: artificially adopting fiscal deficit, issuing bonds and credit expansion policies to expand effective demand, on the one hand, causing a sharp drop in inflation growth rate, making western countries enter the "stagflation" mud pit in the mid-1970s and fall into a dilemma: stimulating investment and demand by reducing taxes and interest rates, solving the problem of economic stagnation and unemployment, will inevitably add fuel to the fire in the high inflation rate and huge fiscal deficit; On the contrary, if we want to control the currency circulation, reduce the fiscal deficit and stop inflation, it will be difficult to stimulate economic recovery and achieve full employment.
It can be seen that the economic function of state monopoly capitalism has a dual nature, that is, it has both a promoting role and a hindering role. Its root lies in its method of solving various contradictions. It is precisely a means to add contradictions and accumulate contradictions. It not only promotes the development of productive forces, but also brings the stagnation trend of economic development. It increasingly concentrates the means of production in the hands of a few people. It has caused the trend of unlimited development of production, and at the same time limited the demand with the ability to pay to the scope of capitalism. State monopoly capitalism cannot solve the inherent contradiction of capitalist mode of production.