For Marx, capitalist production is based on the self-expansion of capital. Capital is expanded through the appropriation of surplus-value as profit. This surplus-value is expanded in two ways: by absolute (longer work hours) or relative surplus value (more productive work hours)

Production in industrial economies became increasingly efficient. Advances in technology and methods of mass production (like Fordism) translated into the absolute overproduction of capital relative to exploitable labor-time. Less labor-time is required to produce a given

But as Marx shows in Capital 3, the reduction of labor-time required in production means a fall in the rate of profit to zero. Capitalists invest more in constant capital (machines, tech) while the proportion of variable capital (labor-time) shrinks.

Over time, a larger share of capital becomes tied up with nonproductive elements of production that don't generate surplus value. The rate of profit falls towards zero because less surplus value is generated from a relatively smaller force of productive proletarian labor.

Leading up to 1929, a crisis of overproduction ensued: more goods were being produced than could be absorbed in markets. To offset falling rate of profit, capital increasingly shifted towards financial speculation on the stock market, where capitalists expected higher returns.

When speculative investments could no longer deliver expected returns, the speculative bubble—fueled by easy credit and excessive borrowing—burst. Industrial capital had taken on debt and was increasingly overtaken by the banks, which in turn failed with widespread defaults.

The only way the rate of profit could be maintained is if commodities were sold above their values. But this was restricted by the form of exchange-value, which was still based on commodity money (gold) serving as a universal equivalent. So, in 1933, the state confiscated gold.

This allowed the Federal Reserve to issue more currency without being constrained by the old gold parity. The money supply could be expanded and more liquidity stimulated growth. Additionally, government subsidization of superfluous labor-time through institutions like the AAA

But this was only possible with the abrogation of the law of value, whose coup de grâce came in 1971. Since 1971, the American dollar is no longer denominated in gold. This means that there is no universal equivalent, and commodity-value no longer corresponds to an equivalent

The mode of production can no longer meaningfully called capitalist, but one in transition. Marx writes that "As soon as labor in the direct form cease[s] to be the [...] wellspring of wealth, labor-time ceases [...] to be its measure, and [...] production based on exchange-value

With fiat currency, labor in the direct form ceases to measure commodity-values. Profits are maintained by commodities sold above their real values, which are asymptotically reduced to zero with every advance in the forces and relations of production, and by usurious rent.

"Capitalism" exists solely as a superstructure phenomenon, with private property—already beholden to the administrative state's regulatory regime—is extirpated as the specific institutions and regulatory apparatus of the West that is in the service of globalist finance capital.

The renewed significance of Marxism-Leninism in the digital age is therefore geopolitical, with the principal contradiction being between the Anglo-American unipole and an emerging multipolar world founded on alternative institutions of regional integration. This reflects back

This division is given actual expression only by Communism — by the real movement of history itself.