In the age of finance capital, every factor that creates instability within the capitalist structure has been laid bare with startling clarity. In the past, when capitalism and its champion, the bourgeoisie, were still progressive forces, capitalism's internal flaws could be partly concealed by comparison with the backwardness and lack of adaptability of pre-capitalist relations. Large-scale production equipped with heavy machinery ruthlessly destroyed technically backward handicrafts. This painful process was merely the collapse of pre-capitalist forms of production. Meanwhile, the existence of pre-capitalist forms of production, those various "third parties," allowed capitalism to expand its influence "peacefully," without exposing how capitalism's outer shell restricted economic progress. Thus the general nature of capitalism's inherent contradictions, the contradictions that form its "laws," became most apparent only after the economy had reached a certain stage of development: when capitalism had passed its infancy, become not merely the dominant form of social and economic life but the universal form of economic relations. In other words, these contradictions became most apparent only when capitalism had become world capitalism. Only now are capitalism's internal contradictions manifesting with overwhelming force. The convulsions of the modern capitalist world, now drenched in blood, on the brink of death and writhing in agony, are an expression of the contradictions within the capitalist system. These contradictions will ultimately bring about the system's explosion.
