The Black Book of Capitalism (Subtitle: A Farewell to Market Economy) (Original title: Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus – Ein Abgesang auf die Marktwirtschaft) is a book written by German philosopher and critical-theorist Robert Kurz and published in 1999.Heidemann, Dieter. "Interview on The Black Book of Capitalism – Robert Kurz" Libcom. 15 February 2005. Retrieved 5 September 2012. It critically examines the history and purported slow collapse of capitalism. It is considered one of the main work of the author associated with value criticism and sparked a debate about the description of the origins of capitalism, its contemporary diagnosis, and the consequences of criticizing the prevailing conditions. The book has, as of 2023, not yet been translated into other languages from the original German.
Kurz had originally preferred the title The Satanic Mills for his work, but was convinced by editor, that preferred a title in relation to The Black Book of Communism. However, Kurz's book does not attempt to list the crimes of capitalism, as Kurz explains that he doesn't "think that even 100 thick volumes would suffice". Instead, this work is a history of the three great industrial revolutions, the legitimization of the social consequences of capitalism, the socialist labour movement viewed as engrained in bourgeois modernization, and the crises that can be viewed as endemic under the capitalist system.Kurz, Robert.Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus: ein Abgesang auf die Marktwirtschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Eichborn Verlag. 1999.
Overview Basic Ideas The central focus of the Black Book is the "Social Question" of the present. Capitalism is currently heading towards a "hopeless situation," and the market economy is unable to cope with its leaps in productivity, such as automation and globalization. The standard of living for broad sections of the population is declining, unemployment is increasing, and the escape into the service sector proves to be an illusion. If the necessary "leap in consciousness" is not made, it ultimately threatens a "rationalization of humanity" and an increasing "decivilization of the world."
Kurz believes that capitalism has a "devastating" overall record in terms of welfare improvement. Although capitalism accelerates the development of productive forces, an increase in welfare has only been temporarily associated with it, limited to "certain social segments and world regions". Capitalism has never been able to apply the powers it has generated for the improvement of the lives of all people.
To be able to think of a new, different alternative, the "apparently ahistorical capitalism" that appears as a natural fact must be historicized. For this purpose, Kurz analyzes the history of capitalism from its beginnings in the 16th century to the present day. He assumes that it has been shaped by three major industrial revolutions: the replacement of human muscle power with machine power in the first industrial revolution, the rationalization of human labor in the second, and the automation that renders human labor redundant in the third industrial revolution.
Kurz puts forth the argument that the overarching force driving historical progress is the self-subjugation of humanity to the economic process of wealth accumulation. He employs Adam Smith's concept of the "beautiful machine" to illustrate this phenomenon. Kurz characterizes this mechanism as a "completely impersonal" and "blind mechanism" that is often accepted without critical examination, almost akin to a quasi "natural law." The primary objective of this "beautiful machine" is the continuous "valorization of value" , entailing the perpetual accumulation of "money" and "quantities of abstract labor". Utilizing Karl Marx's terminology, Kurz describes this mode of production as "meaningless" since it no longer depends on its inherent content but solely on the "expenditure of labor power as such. " It involves surrendering to the "abstract self-purpose of money" and engaging in a "determined activity beyond one's own needs and outside of one's own control." Holding onto the principle of "abstract labor" represents a fundamental commonality observed throughout societies and their critics since the advent of modern times. Even the proponents of bourgeois revolutions and the labor movement have been unable to liberate themselves from this paradigm.
Context The work can be seen in the context of the "Manifesto Against Work" and other publications by authors of the capitalism-critical journals Exit! and Krisis. It is part of a collapse theory advocated by Kurz. Its starting point is his publication The Collapse of Modernization (1991), in which Robert Kurz examines "the collapse of state socialism and the end of traditional Marxist world interpretation." The "Black Book of Capitalism" is an analysis of the "capitalist history" as a sequence of three industrial revolutions, focusing on the development of "productive forces" and the "history of ideology." The sequel to the "Black Book" is a trilogy on the process of globalization: "World Order War" examines the "traditional imperialism debate," while "The World Capital" analyzes the globalization debate. It also includes an unpublished account of the role of the United States in the world economy since World War II.
Theory and Content Cultural-Historical Foundations
Intellectual Development Kurz begins his historical analysis of capitalism in the early 17th century, when a societal model of "total competition" emerged. He believes that the underlying worldview and image of humanity became hegemonic in Western thinking up to the present day.
The rising entrepreneurial class in the market economy secured a strong social position. However, it no longer felt bound to the traditional structure of authoritarian hierarchy and developed its own "ideology of domination" to legitimize its specific interests. According to Kurz, the "great patriarch of liberalism" is Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes considered humans inherently egoistic beings engaged in a "war of all against all," and he argued for the necessity of a superior power, the state, to tame the "human predators" and establish negative sociability. Kurz asserts that this justification of the "absolute state" continues to exist today. For Hobbes, "freedom" primarily meant "buying and selling and engaging in trade" rather than the ability to "cooperatively behave according to one's own needs and agreements."
Kurz argues that the transformation of the competitive impulse into a positive attribute, which he refers to as the "revaluation of all values," was carried out by Bernard Mandeville. According to Mandeville, through mutual competition, the naturally lazy, selfish, and greedy human being can contribute to a "flourishing community." This perspective declares that "feeling and suffering with the misfortunes and misery of others" is a sentiment of the "weakest minds" that should not be indulged by the "men of the market."
According to Kurz, this cynicism is surpassed by Marquis de Sade, who radicalized the ideology of the "survival of the fittest" to the extent of murder. De Sade branded any social compassion as a negative "natural characteristic" of women. By reducing sexuality to the act of coitus, he transformed it into a mechanical process analogous to the capitalist production process.
According to Kurz, the views of Immanuel Kant represent a further advancement in that they assume the competition of selfish individuals as the developmental law of humanity. Kant considered the mechanism of global capital as "a work of the 'Hand of God,'" as "the result of an overall context determined by divine providence, a 'higher nature' of the system".
This idea of the "wise creator" then leads to the popularized metaphor of the "invisible hand" mentioned in Adam Smith's magnum opus. According to Kurz, this metaphor shows "how the worldview of modern economics systematically builds on that of mechanical physics." Smith insists that "through the obsessive activism of capitalist 'makers,' the greatest possible improvement and the best possible distribution" are achieved, rendering any criticism unnecessary. The glorification of the "independent and self-contained 'beauty of order'" and the brilliance of the economic "machine," the regular and harmonious movement of the system, is emphasized. Smith is seen as having developed the worldview [Weltanschauung] of modern economics, ultimately based on that of mechanical physics. The activity of this new "political economy," according to Kurz, consists of "exploring" capitalist economics with the claim of scientific inquiry; while constantly "proving" its own necessity.
The ethical principle of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number" advocated by Jeremy Bentham promotes a society that grants every individual the right to "pursue their happiness," as also reflected in the phrase "pursuit of happiness" in the United States Declaration of Independence. The objective measure of happiness is ultimately money, and according to Bentham, the right to property must not be infringed in any way.
Biologistic Foundation A central development in the 19th century, according to Kurz, is Darwinism, which exhibits a characteristic of modern natural science:
"A truly great discovery became completely fused with an irrational ideological impulse and unreflective interests of the capitalist fetish system, eventually becoming charged with tremendous destructive power".
Kurz sees Darwin as part of the tradition of the Enlightenment and its program of "naturalizing" the world. However, the freethinkers did not have genuine enlightenment in mind: the apparent eradication of religion by the natural sciences was reserved for the intellectual elite or served as a more sophisticated form of mass control and self-discipline.
Darwin believed he had discovered the mechanism for evolution, i.e., the gradual change and higher development of living beings, in the "struggle for existence," i.e., in selection. The retrojection of this doctrine onto society provided a welcome "scientific" justification for the capitalist concept of competition. The so-called "social Darwinism" was soon employed by "imperialist ideologists such as Friedrich Naumann and Walther Rathenau" to formulate German claims to world power.
For Kurz, Darwinism and capitalism are associated with the eugenics movements that sought to develop a "scientific" human "selective breeding." Social Darwinism introduced "negative selection" for eliminating the "biologically inferior" members of society, particularly criminals and those deemed unfit for work in the capitalist sense. This ideology of social Darwinism was initially realized as a form of "reproductive hygiene":
"While the 'inferior' and 'degenerate' were to be prevented from reproducing if necessary by legal means and police violence, it was considered a socio-political goal to bring together 'genetically healthy' human material according to agricultural criteria".
With Darwinism, modern racism also emerged, extending from Kant ("Race") to Hegel and Auguste Comte ("Law of three stages") which led Arthur de Gobineau to invent the myth of the "Aryan master race."