Was the payment of the miners' wages, after WWII, “a deduction from overall surplus value” as Roberts claims? Clearly not. The only basis for such a claim would be if the labour of the miners was not socially necessary labour, i.e. did not produce a use-value, and so was not value-creating labour. Is that really what Roberts wants to claim? Is he saying that the coal produced by those miners, was not demanded by British capital in the steel works, power stations, on the railways, and to heat homes and factories etc.? If, the coal had not been produced, would British capital have simply done without the need for coal?
Only if the capital employed in that production would not otherwise have been employed in such production, if there was no demand for the output, and so it was financed by taxing/siphoning off a part of total surplus value that would have been utilised, more productively, in other ways, can it be argued that this was not itself capital, not, itself, value-creating, and productive of surplus-value/capital. That is true in relation to arms spending, by the state, for example, but it is not generally true of statised capital as a whole, whether it is in relation to coal and energy production, steel, vehicles, transport, or health and social-care, and education. In the late 1980's, and after, the coal industry, in Britain, disappeared, because the demand for coal had been vastly reduced, and the coal required could now be obtained much cheaper by importing it. The same was true of steel, shipbuilding etc.
Is it sometimes true that the state siphons off surplus value, to sustain production in an industry that would, otherwise, not attract capital into it? Yes, of course.
Marx described the situation in relation to forestry, for example. The turnover time for forestry is so prolonged that capital has to be advanced for decades, before a virgin forest is able to produce the trees that can be sold, and, thereby, enable the capital to realise a profit. Its one reason that the rate of profit/profit margin, on such production is so high, in order to return the average annual rate of profit. But, states need the production of trees and timber, so that, even if individual private capitals would not engage in such production, the state must do so, on behalf of capital in general. The same is true with a lot of infrastructure, not to mention, things like the development of atomic energy, space industry and so on. Only when the development of technology in these spheres has reached a stage that the value of fixed capital is massively reduced, does it become possible for non-state capitals to enter these spheres, as, now, with the rapidly growing space industries.
In fact, this is only an extension of the analysis made by Marx and Engels, in relation to the development of socialised capital, in general, in the 19th century. In other words, when production reaches a stage, where the amount of capital required, even as a minimal, let alone optimal size is so huge, private capital, is no longer sufficient. At that point, the monopoly of private capital becomes a fetter on the accumulation of capital itself. It is then supplanted by socialised capital, be it in the form of the cooperative or the joint stock company, able to mobilise the money-capital of the whole of society.
Similarly, after WWII, the British economy needed coal, steel and so on. It could have allowed those industries to disappear, and, instead have imported coal, steel and so on, which is what happened after the 1980's. But, given that, after WWII, Britain already had difficulty funding its import of food, and other basic commodities, which were rationed, it lacked the foreign currency, and the exports to finance such a massive level of imports, let alone the significance of becoming dependent on them for such strategic industries. The latter concern was removed when Britain became a member of the EEC/EU. But, in addition, had it let the coal industry collapse, at a time when it employed around three-quarters of a million workers, with many hundreds of thousands of other jobs dependent on it, in other industries, the state would have had to fund billions of pounds in unemployment benefits, and so on, which would themselves have had to be financed by taxation on surplus-value.
Thousands of self-employed farmers
gave themselves the day off to protest in London about having some of
their existing tax advantages reduced. Of course, 70% of the
population can't enjoy even that privilege, because they are
wage-workers, and have to negotiate their days off with their
employer, some of whom will themselves be farmers. The farmers were
joined by some of the people who are the ones who will really be
affected by the changes in Inheritance Tax on farms, the rich
landowners who rent out their land to tenant farmers, or who operate
farms on a commercial basis, employing professional managers. Some
of those landowners are the richest people in the country like King
Charles, or the Duke of Westminster, but also, include people like
James Dyson, who does not even live in the country, let alone work
his farm.
Prominent on the demonstration,
which was an echo of similar demonstrations in the past, for example
of the petty-bourgeois, Gilets Jaunes, in France, or the Tea Party
supporters in the US, was, of course, Nigel Farage, who along with
all of those farmers and fishing families that supported him, brought
about the Brexit that they are now suffering from, but which,
unfortunately, the rest of us are suffering from, also. Also,
prominent was Jeremy Clarkson, who admitted some time ago that he had
bought his farm, in order to be able to pass on an asset worth
several million pounds tax free to his kids. Clarkson is a good
example, of the fallacious nature of the arguments being presented.
Clarkson has made three series,
shown on Amazon, based around his farming antics. He probably made
as much money from the series as he has made from his farming
activities. The underlying theme of the series, much as with some of
his previous series involving cars, is his general idiocy and
incompetence, but from which he is saved by other people, who
actually do know what they are doing. In the case of “Clarkson's
Farm”, one of those is Caleb, who its clear was the one really
doing the farming. In addition, Clarkson employed a professional
manager, who advised him on the law, rules and regulations, and
oversaw the books. Clarkson's partner, also played a role in the
farm, running a farm shop, and so on, but, as far as I could see, the
rest of Clarkson's family were nowhere to be seen, as far as farming
was concerned.
But, the argument of the farmers is that they need to be exempt from the Inheritance Tax so as to be able
to pass down farms to their children so that these children can keep
the farm in existence. In the case of Clarkson's Farm, there is even
less indication that his children have any interest in taking over
and farming the land, let alone ability in that regard, than he does.
If there is a case for the farm being handed down to anyone on that
basis, it would be to those he employed, such as Caleb, and his
professional manager, yet, they will get nothing!
But, even assuming that an existing
farmer's children did have any kind of interest or ability in running
a farm, it is a peculiar throw back to feudalism to believe that they
should simply have an inherent right to take it over. That idea, is
just an extension of the feudal relics such as the Monarchy, and
hereditary aristocracy. It is wholly undemocratic, but also idiotic.
You may as well say that, because my dad was a tool maker, when he
retired, I should have had a right to inherit his job, whether I was
any good at engineering (I'm not), or not. That is not even the
basis of a class system, but of a caste system. No wonder so many of
these farmers say that they are making no money running their farms,
which should be an indictment of them, in itself, because it begs the
question of how many of them, simply inherited the farm and carried
on with it, with no great ability to efficiently run such a business,
and to be clear, farming is a business, like any other.
To return to the engineering
comparison, there are many small, family owned, engineering
businesses, but the owners of those businesses do not enjoy the same
tax privileges that farmers enjoy. When the owners die, unless they
have made use of the many tax loopholes that exist to be able to pass
on property, which make Inheritance Tax, really, just a voluntary
tax, their estate would pay IHT, like everyone else, at a rate of
40%. Indeed, many farmers themselves do not enjoy the tax privileges
that landowners enjoy, either, because only 54% of farms are
owner-occupied, with 14% fully tenanted, and 35% mixed tenure. So,
if you are a tenant farmer, you have no farm to pass on.
The simple answer for farms is to
operate them as companies, as with most other businesses in a modern
economy, and for that company to then own the assets, which remain
with it in perpetuity. There would, then, be no asset to pass on,
and the company would simply employ workers, as either professional
managers, or labourers, who would be paid a wage, as with any other
business. That would mean that it would be more likely that farms
would be run professionally and more efficiently, reducing the costs
of agricultural products, and removing the need for subsidies and
other advantages. As with all other businesses, the other
consequence of that would be that the less efficient farms would be
taken over by larger more efficient businesses, thereby, obtaining
economies of scale.
Blue Labour in its normal
duplicitous manner, as it tries to appeal to the contradictory
interests of its unstable electoral coalition, has ended up falling
between two stools. It tried to present this change in progressive
terms, but, if it really had been a progressive measure, it would
have facilitated that concentration of capital into larger, more
efficient farm businesses, by removing the insidious privileges
enjoyed by farms as against every other form of capital, or asset.
In fact, it did not do that, because, it has tried to stick with its
own petty-bourgeois, nationalist mindset of privileging the small
business class, of which the family farm is the epitome. As it has
now had to admit, the reality of its proposal is that, those small
family owned farms, will still be able to be passed on tax free up to
a vale of £3 million, and with further continued exceptions and
privileges even after that.
The arguments of these reactionary
small farmers, the majority of whom (60%) voted for the idiocy of
Brexit, and most of whom vote Tory or worse, are unsustainable, and
certainly unsupportable. The claim that farms will have to be sold,
and so would risk future food production is nonsense. If farms are
so inefficient that those that inherit them can't make a profit, or
can't pay the due tax, then its time they did close down, and were
taken over by someone who will run them professionally and
efficiently. There are plenty of professional, trained farmers who
would be prepared to do so, but, also, there are plenty of larger
farm business that would simply swallow them up, and produce on a
larger scale, and, thereby more efficiently.
Of course, as I wrote, some time
ago, for my part, I would scrap IHT altogether, and simply impose
Capital Gains Tax at the same rate as Income Tax, on the recipients.
That would encourage large estates of all types of assets to be
dissipated, and would ensure that the current voluntary nature of IHT
was ended.
“The writings of Herr Dühring with which we are here primarily concerned are his Kursus der Philosophie, his Kursus der National- und Sozialökonomie, and his Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Sozialismus. The first of these particularly claims our attention now.” (p 35)
Engels emphasises the pompous nature of Duhring and his intellectual claims. Thus, on the first page of this work, Duhring proclaimed himself to be,
“the man who claims to represent this power” (philosophy) “in his age and for its immediately foreseeable development” (p 35)
This is not the claim of a mere mortal, who might consider that they have uncovered some important truth about the world they live in, but the claim of a God, or Superman, to have unlocked all truth, absolute truth, for all time.
“Many people, even before Herr Dühring, have thought something of this kind about themselves, but — except for Richard Wagner — he is probably the first who has calmly blurted it out. And the truth to which he refers is,
“a final and ultimate truth”. (p 35)
As such, Duhring cannot limit his scope to current reality, but extends it to all possible realities. He presents it as a materialist philosophy, and yet this presents an obvious contradiction in terms of these other, potential, future realities, i.e. realities that do not physically exist.
“the natural system or the philosophy of reality... In it reality is so conceived as to exclude any tendency to a visionary and subjectively limited conception of the world”. (p 35)
Every philosophy is subjectively limited by the individuals that develop it, because their own thoughts and mental processes are influenced by their own perception of reality. A scientific method seeks to, objectively, identify facts, and laws of motion, but must, itself, be subject to this same limitation. Moreover, as Marx describes, a distinction must be made between Natural Laws, such as The Law of Gravity, The Law of Natural Selection, or The Law of Value, as against laws that are themselves historically limited and conditioned, such as the laws of capital, or wages, or commodity production and exchange.
Duhring seeks to present his philosophy as free from any such limitations, and to have identified Absolute Truth, “although so far we do not see how this miracle should come to pass.” (p 36)
The basic element of this, for Duhring, is to seek only scientific truth. As he puts it,
“From its “really critical standpoint” it provides “the elements of a philosophy which is real and therefore directed to the reality of nature and of life, a philosophy which cannot allow the validity of any merely apparent horizon, but in its powerfully revolutionising movement unfolds all earths and heavens of outer and inner nature” . It is a “new mode of thought”, and its results are “from the ground up original conclusions and views ... system-creating ideas ... established truths”.” (p 36)
In which case, there would be no place for social laws, or historically specific laws. Yet, modern natural science has identified that, even truths about this reality, this Universe, are not, necessarily, true for alternative realities, other universes. Even within this universe, things once thought to be absolute, such as time, are now known to be relative. The latest science even conceives that, at the start of the universe, the speed of light may have been different to what it is now.
Having identified this key to absolute truth, therefore, Duhring felt able to present his own fully worked out schema of the future socialist society, conforming to it, and which could only conform to it, according to Duhring.
“We have given the above anthology only for the purpose of showing that we have before us not any ordinary philosopher and socialist, who merely expresses his ideas and leaves it to the future to judge their worth, but quite an extraordinary creature, who claims to be not less infallible than the Pope, and whose doctrine is the one way to salvation and simply must be accepted by anyone who does not want to fall into the most abominable heresy.” (p 37)
Unfortunately, combined with those traits of the other main strand of socialist thought, that of Lassalle, who Marx described as the model of the future socialist dictator, we have many of those elements to be found in Stalinism, but, also, in many of the small socialist micro-sects that have proliferated.
This was not an example of one of the many works of well-meaning individuals, Engels says, who set down their ideas on paper, with varying degrees of lucidity, as they themselves sought to make sense of the world, and offer some solutions to its problems.
“On the contrary, Herr Dühring offers us principles which he declares are final and ultimate truths and besides which any other views views are, therefore, false from the outset; he is in possession not only of the exclusive truth but also of the sole strictly scientific method of investigation, in contrast with which all others are unscientific. Either he is right — and in this case we have before us the greatest genius of all time, the first superhuman, because infallible, human being. Or he is wrong, and in that case, whatever our judgment may be, benevolent regard for his possibly good intentions would nevertheless be the most deadly insult to Herr Dühring.” (p 37-8)
Duhring's pomposity was also manifest in his dismissal of all those that had preceded him. Engels quotes his statements in respect of the few even considered worthy of his mention.
““Leibniz, devoid of any better sentiments ... that best of all courtier-philosophisers”
Kant is barely tolerated; but after Kant everything got into a muddle;
there followed the “wild ravings and equally inane and windy stupidities of the immediate epigoni, namely, a Fichte and a Schelling ... monstrous caricatures of ignorant natural philosophising ... the post-Kantian monstrosities” and “the delirious fantasies” crowned by “a Hegel”. The latter used a “Hegel jargon” and spread the “Hegel pestilence” by means of his “method which was unscientific even in form” and by his “crudities”.” (p 38)
“Darwinian semi-poetry and dexterity in metamorphosis, with gross-minded narrowness of comprehension and blunted power of differentiation ... In our view what is specific to Darwinism, from which of course the Lamarckian elements must be excluded, is a piece of brutality directed against humanity.” (p 38)
Not surprisingly, for someone who believed they had the only true version of socialism, it was the socialists who fared worst in Duhring's criticism.
“With the exception at most of Louis Blanc — the most insignificant of them all — they are sinners all and sundry, and they fall short of the reputation which they should have before (or behind) Herr Dühring.” (p 38-9)
Duhring did not just dismiss their ideas, but also engaged in character assassination, and an almost Trumpian play on their names.
“Herr Dühring characterises the utopians according to their names, with devastating wit; Saint-Simon — saint (holy), Fourier — fou (crazy), Enfantin — enfant (childish); he only needs to add: Owen — o woe! and a very important period in the history of socialism has been condemned - in four words, and anyone who has any doubts about it “should himself be classed under some category of idiot”.” (p 39-40)
And, Duhring, of course, had to address the socialists of his time, the most notable being Lassalle and Marx, which he did in similar vein. And, of these characterisations, Engels note,
“For the moment — we will guard against voicing any doubt as to their deep-rootedness, as we might otherwise be prohibited from trying to find the category of idiot to which we belong. We only thought it was our duty, on the one hand, to give an example of what Herr Dühring calls
“the select language of the considerate and, in the real sense of the word, moderate mode of expression”
and on the other, to make it clear that to Herr Dühring the worthlessness of his predecessors is no less established a fact than his own infallibility. Whereupon we sink to the ground in deepest reverence before the mightiest genius of all time — if that is how things really stand.” (p 40-41)
Blue Labour, in line with its petty-bourgeois, nationalist ideology is seeking salvation by returning to the ideas of deregulation, previously advocated by the likes of the Miseans, and manifest in the short lived government of Liz Truss that represented the high-point of that trend in Britain. It was, of course, portrayed by the likes of Truss, and the Miseans, as one of the “benefits” of Brexit, to be able to “take back control”, and turn Britain even more into a casino economy, rather like the days of Batista's Cuba. It is, as with Thatcher, in the 1980's, where petty-bourgeois reaction meets, conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism).
In the 1980's, Thatcher began as a continuation of that conservative social-democracy, hence the initial enthusiasm for the development of the EU single-market, seen as a means of creating a much larger market, with common rules and regulation (a level playing field for capital), and so, also, considerably reduced costs that would boost profits, and, thereby, the revenues of the owners of fictitious capital (dividends/interest and rents). But, by the end of the 1980's, the growth of the petty-bourgeoisie, and its increasing social weight, began to be seen in the Tory Party, and Thatcher, who had championed the ideas of Hayek, as a means of undermining the position of workers, and forcing employers to confront them, was driven, inevitably, into its logical extension. The battle raged on in the Tory Party, from then to today.
As Marx and Engels described, even 150 years ago, planning and regulation is not some anathema to large-scale capital, but is central to it. It is what distinguishes that large-scale capital from its immature predecessors, whose remnants linger on in the form of the small private capitals, family businesses, and self-employed, i.e. the petty-bourgeoisie. In the late 1980's, as productivity rose sharply, as a result of the microchip revolution (itself a response to the crisis of overproduction of capital of the 1970's), it caused a huge jump in the rate of profit, as wages fell, with labour being replaced. The value of constant capital dropped massively, as a result of rising productivity, and fixed capital suffered a huge moral depreciation. Not only did a smaller proportion of current output need to go to replace the consumed constant and variable capital (a release of capital), but also meant that any given amount of profit would buy an increased quantity of both of constant and variable-capital, Marx's definition of the rate of profit. It meant that realised profits hugely exceeded the requirements for capital accumulation. Interest rates, inevitably fell, and so asset prices rose.
With labour being replaced, and wages falling, aggregate demand was constrained, and only sustained as a result of a huge increase in the availability of credit. Household debt rose astronomically, not just in Britain, but in the US too, and that was accompanied by further growth of debt of these economies, as deindustrialisation saw a shift of material production to Asia and elsewhere. In both the US and UK, under Reagan and Thatcher, respectively, credit controls were removed, and financial regulation was scrapped, setting the conditions for an even bigger growth of debt, but also, for financial speculation that blew up the asset price bubbles in property, shares, bonds, and an exotic and growing array of derivatives based upon them. It was the foundation for the financial crises of 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2008.
As with the 1929 stock market crash, which resulted in the introduction of the various financial regulations and credit controls that were scrapped in the 1980's, the 2008 global financial crash, and need to bail out the banks and financial institutions, led to the reimposition of some tentative regulation, but a ruling class that had become addicted to capital gains on its already inflated paper wealth, rather than the revenues (interest/dividends, rents) it obtained from those paper assets, could not countenance any severe restrictions that would prevent those asset prices from being further inflated, as central banks pumped increasing amounts of liquidity into them, via QE, and governments constrained economic growth, via austerity, to prevent the underlying rise in the demand for capital from causing interest rates to rise.
Conservative social-democracy, which bases itself on the interests of that ruling-class, and its form of property – fictitious-capital – as opposed to progressive social-democracy, which bases itself on the interests of real, socialisedindustrial capital, pursued that course, not only under Thatcher, and then Major, but also under Blair and Brown. The same was seen in the US, and across the EU, and Asia. But, as I have set out, elsewhere, it had a very definite shelf-life, and sowed the seeds of its own destruction. The warning shock came in 2000, and was followed by the global financial crisis of 2008, which spelled its end.
The ruling class, and its conservative socal-democratic representatives had no solution, other than ever more surreal injections of liquidity to devalue currencies, and inflate asset prices, as well as an obvious undermining of real capital itself, via austerity and other methods of reducing economic growth, trade and capital accumulation, so as to restrain the demand for capital, and so interest rates. All of them, eventually failed to achieve that end, even the physical lockdown of economies, on the pretext of COVID, which itself had the consequence that governments felt impelled to provide income replacement schemes, financed by even more liquidity injections, which destroyed currencies even further, producing not just an inevitable commodity price inflation, but also, a surge in demand, and demand for additional capital, once the lockdowns had to be lifted.
The ruling class has run out of road, but the working-class, the collective owners of real socialised capital, neither understands its position as owners of that capital, nor yet has the class consciousness to demand its rightful control over it. It certainly lacks any mass workers' party able to represent its interests in that regard. It has been left in the old position of trades union consciousness, simply bargaining within the system, albeit, now, in conditions far more favourable than over the previous 40 years, as a result, now, of a growing relative shortage of labour.
A lot has been made of the fact that earnings have not been rising, but, as I have set out, previously, Marx describes the way that, initially, whilst hourly wages do not rise, certainly not in real terms, those wages do rise, because workers work more hours, including overtime, and, as employment rises, more members of households are employed, bringing in additional income. So household income rises, even while individual hourly wages may not. That is what happened in the 1950's, and early 60's.
A look at the US, shows a clear distinction in how Democrat voters – mostly wage workers – viewed the state of the economy, as against Republican voters – largely petty-bourgeois. Democrat voters saw the economy as having done much better than did Republican voters, and that is explained, not because of a political bias, of one group looking through rose-tinted glasses, as compared to the other. It is a reflection of the fact that, in conditions of a growing relative labour shortage, wage workers have, overall, seen an improvement in their household income, whereas the petty-bourgeoisie, the small business people, self-employed etc., have seen a clear deterioration.
The petty-bourgeoisie cannot take advantage of labour shortages to increase its income, because its income dos not come from wages, but from the sale of its goods and services. While increased demand has meant it sold more, inflation has raised its own production costs even more. What is more, in so far as it employs a small number of workers itself, it has seen the wages of those workers rise, raising its costs, and squeezing its small profits even further. It is that petty-bourgeoisie that turned out for Trump, whilst the Democrats, who were seen, under Biden/Harris, to repeatedly intervene on behalf of big capital to force workers back to work, and to accept contracts, at the same time as siding with racist cops, and a Zionist genocide, failed to turn out 12 million of their voters.
Those same processes are seen in Britain and Europe too. The consequence is far more pronounced in Britain, as a result of Brexit. Britain no longer has the protection of the EU, has cut itself off from its largest market, further increasing its own costs, and is 3,000 miles away from the US, making any thought of it becoming the 51st state, or benefiting from any potential trade deal with it, impractical.
The obvious solution for Britain is to re-join the EU. The Governor of the Bank of England, has said that Britain should try to get closer to it, but as James O'Brien, commented, after his speech, exactly what does that mean? Its like leaving a club, and then asking to still use its facilities.
If Britain wants the benefits of the single market and customs union, then, its necessary to join them, and that means accepting the terms of membership, and all the rules and regulations. But, then, why do that, but not be part of the EU itself, so as to have a say in formulating those rules? But, Blue Labour has set its face against any such approach. It is set adrift, and the consequence is seen in the fact that, having taken over an economy that was growing, it now presides over one that has stagnated, since it took office, and, in September, has actually seen GDP fall! That is disastrous for a government that set all of its eggs in the basket of economic growth, as the basis of its entire programme.
The Tories, of course, claim that it's Blue Labour's tax policies that are to blame. Yet, Blue Labour has failed to actually implement any kind of real tax rises that could have provided it with the revenues to finance its meagre programme for investment in infrastructure. As I wrote before the election, it is somewhat constrained in that, again, precisely, because of Brexit. Large firms facing higher taxes in Britain can simply move to the EU, whereas there is little benefit in such firms already operating in the EU, moving to Britain, even if they face higher taxes in the EU, simply because it is a much bigger market, and the costs of business are much lower, offsetting any marginal tax differences. The position in respect of wealth taxes on individuals, is even more acute, as such individuals, can move anywhere in the world to live.
So, its no surprise, therefore, that Blue Labour has reached for that old petty-bourgeois ideology of deregulation once more, as it seeks to finance its plans without raising taxes. Speaking to bankers, Rachel Reeves said that the regulations introduced after 2008 were now too much, despite the minimal nature of those regulations. The same petty-bourgeois approach has been seen in Blue Labour continuation of the Tory policies in respect of Free Ports and so on, where all sorts of cowboys can set up, and avoid even the most minimal regulations.
Blue Labour's proposals for pension funds have all the hallmarks of what happened prior to 2008, in respect of the creation of mortgage backed securities, and other such investment vehicles. The idea of the MBS was that, by packaging a large number of individual mortgages into one security, the small number of individual mortgages that were high risk (that turned out to be the mortgages given to people who had no means of ever repaying them) would be balanced by a larger number of very safe mortgages, so that a bank or other speculators could buy these MBS, thereby, providing the finance to the mortgage companies who would then be able to hand out a much larger number of mortgages. Its what bookies do when they lay off big bets to a series of other bookies.
The sub-prime crisis showed the problem with that. When interest rates started to rise, in the early 2000's, as the global economy grew rapidly, and the demand for capital rose, all of those sub-prime mortgages started to default. When property prices, also fell, the mortgage providers couldn't even get back the value of their loans from selling the house, and the more houses went into a fire sale, the more it depressed property prices further. Eventually, it became apparent that the “good” mortgages, within the MBS were overwhelmed by the bad. The rest was history.
Blue Labour's proposal to create much bigger “mega” pension funds, in itself, is unobjectionable. Bigger funds, mean that overhead costs of administering the funds, and so on, are proportionally less. It does mean that, such larger funds can play the averages, so as to put money into some higher risk ventures, with higher returns. But, the experience of 2008, and of the MBS etc., shows the risks. Another example is that of the Co-op Bank, which took over Britannia Building Society, which also had made a lot of bad loans to people to buy property. These were institutions we were told belonged to their members, and yet the Co-op Bank went bust, and subsequently, it was seen that it had engaged in behaviour that its members, and certainly its workers, would never have condoned, if they had actually had democratic control over it.
There is a good reason that the large majority of ordinary workers who put their savings into ISA's, each year, put most of that money into cash ISA's, rather than into the share or bond ISA's, despite the fact that the latter provide higher returns. It is that they have seen the earlier periods of such higher returns on shares and bonds, which, then turned into large capital losses. Indeed, one reason that regulations were put in place to require pension funds to put money into long-term government bonds, was to ensure a safer long-term source of them funding future pension liabilities. The other reason was, of course, that at a time when those bonds, were themselves over priced, as a result of QE, it pumped further liquidity into them, in the hope of preventing a fall in their price. If workers had control over their pension funds, which, of course, they should, it might well be the case that they would put some of that money into some more risky ventures, but they would ensure that such risk was minimised.
Moreover, workers have a reason to use such funds to actually invest in real capital accumulation, as opposed to what most pension funds and other financial institutions do, which is simply to buy the shares or bonds of companies. The vast majority of the money that goes into the purchase of such shares and bonds, is not used to finance real capital accumulation. It simply changes the ownership of existing paper assets, and acts to push up their price. Workers, by contrast, would have an interest in using the money in their funds to directly finance the purchase of real capital, i.e. the building of new factories, offices and so on, as well as machines, materials, and labour-power.
That real investment is, in fact, anathema to the financial institutions, because it directly produces economic expansion, drawing additional liquidity into the real economy, and away from financial speculation. When the financial institutions, and press talk about “investment”, what they really mean is not investment at all, but only the purchase of financial assets, i.e. gambling on the prices of those assets rising.
Of course, Reeves and Blue Labour are not going to propose giving workers their rightful control over their pension funds, any more than they are going to give them their rightful control over their socialised capital. Reeves simply wants to use the hundreds of billions in those pension funds to finance her governments spending plans, with workers having no say in the matter at all. The media have claimed that the state stands behind these local government pension funds, but that is not true. Like any other company pension fund, both employer and worker pay into them, and the money is managed via a board, and “invested” into various financial assets, usually via a financial institution. The future pensions are paid out of the fund created by these investments, not by the state. However, if Blue Labour seeks to pressure, in some way, these new mega funds to finance more speculative ventures, workers would have every right to demand that the state underwrite any losses sustained as a result of it.
The contradictions in Blue Labour's agenda become more obvious each day, as it pursues that petty-bourgeois, nationalist programme. The Blair-right, former advisor John McTiernan, the other day, caused some concern in the ranks of Blue Labour, when he responded to the whining of small farmers about losing some of their tax advantages, in the budget, by saying that the government should treat them in the same way that Thatcher treated the miners. Such straight talking is not the method for Blue Labour, especially as it talks out of both sides of its mouth, in order to lie to each component of its shaky electoral coalition simultaneously. But, of course, McTiernan is basically correct. The Tories, and the petty-bourgeoisie are quick to point out that workers cannot expect the state to keep them in work, in industries that are not profitable.
Brexit, which many small farmers backed, as with many small fishing businesses, have, now, found the reality of the consequences of that action. But, also, those small farms, and fishing enterprises, are not rational, efficient businesses anyway. Just as many other small businesses disappeared over the last 200 years, because they are not competitive compared to large-scale capital, so too that applies to farming and fishing. They have been kept going by the state, and, indeed, by the EU, via the CAP, where most of them should have been merged into much larger businesses long ago.
Joe Biden has looked like one of those series of geriatric soviet leaders, in the 1980's that doddered on and off the political stage, as they shuffled off their mortal coil, to make way for the next. It was a time when nuclear Armageddon looked to be imminent, and later we found that, it was closer than we thought, as bombers on a number of occasions had been launched, and missiles readied due to technical errors suggesting one side or the other had already launched an attack. Like them, Biden is also, now, on his political deathbed, but he seems to want to blow up the world, by starting World War III, before he dies.
No doubt, Starmer, and other European suppliers of Storm Shadow and other long range missiles and weapons, thought they were safe, in giving Zelensky permission to use those weapons to strike deep into Russia, because without the US giving its permission, no such strike is possible. The US dominates NATO, and its subordinates in Europe, not only politically and strategically, but, also, by its supply and control of vital component technologies, as well as its control of the necessary satellite guidance systems. US imperialism, has no desire for an immediate nuclear war with Russia, which would destroy both. Besides, its main target is not Russia, but China. So, Starmer et al, no doubt thought that no such approval would be given by the US. Biden, with nothing, personally, left to lose, has upset their plans.
US imperialism itself has sought to simply grind down Russia, in a prolonged trench war, draining Russian economic, political and military resources, using the blood and bones of Ukrainian workers to achieve that end. The longer it went on, the better that was for US imperialism, much as with the role of US imperialism in World War I and II, which it stayed out of supplying weapons and finance, until both sides had degraded each other, leaving the US to come in at the end, to tip the balance in favour of its own geo-strategic goals.
That is consistent with the nature of imperialism, and its main political representative, social-democracy. Its no coincidence that the US has fought most of its imperialist wars under Democrat rather than Republican governments, or that Britain has fought most of its imperialist wars under Liberal, and Labour governments, rather than Tory governments.
As Marxists, we oppose all such wars. We support the right of free secession for oppressed nations, and oppose the use of force to prevent it. But, as Lenin and the Bolsheviks set out, in that document, even, in that case, we do not advocate or support demands for such secession. We are for the removal of borders, and breaking down of existing divisions, not for creating new ones, not the creation of new bourgeois states! We support revolutionary struggles against imperialism, but only as revolutionary struggles of the oppressed, struggles undertaken by revolutionary workers, drawing revolutionary masses behind them, not struggles of one national bourgeoisie against another, whether cloaked in claims of "national liberation" or not.
"The interests of the working class demand the amalgamation of the workers of all the nationalities in a given state in united proletarian organisations—political, trade union, co-operative, educational, etc. This amalgamation of the workers of different nationalities in single organisations will alone enable the proletariat to wage a victorious struggle against international capital and reaction, and combat the propaganda and aspirations of the landowners, clergy and bourgeois nationalists of all nations, who usually cover up their anti-proletarian aspirations with the slogan of “national culture”. The world working-class movement is creating and daily developing more and more an international proletarian culture."
Moreover, this right of free secession, as with the bourgeois-democratic demand for "national self-determination", can never be privileged above the struggle for proletarian revolution, which is one reason we are in favour of "revolutionary defeatism", on the basis that "The Main Enemy Is At Home". As with any of the bourgeois-democratic demands, which we support in the abstract, the revolutionary nature of such demands comes from the context, and the class content of the forces fighting for it, not the form of words contained in the demand itself. We support the freedoms provided to workers lyingly and fraudulently presented in such demands, only in order to mobilise the workers still in thrall to those concepts, in order to enable them to move beyond them, in revolutionary struggle, as they see those lies exposed. We support not a bourgeois-democratic struggle for them, but a revolutionary proletarian struggle, utilising revolutionary proletarian, not bourgeois-democratic means, via workers councils, factory and peasant committees, workers militia and so on. In other words, we propose the transitional method of permanent revolution, as set out by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky.
Even where, on this basis, a revolutionary struggle was possible, Marxists have to set it, within the wider context of the interests of the global working-class, as against the interests of the particular working-class. As Lenin described, if such a revolutionary struggle would risk a wider conflict between large bourgeois states, let alone two nuclear armed imperialist blocs, which would lead to the devastation of millions of workers, Marxists would oppose such a struggle.
““But we cannot be in favour of a war between great nations, in favour of the slaughter of twenty million people for the sake of the problematical liberation of a small nation with a population of perhaps ten or twenty millions!” Of course not!”
The war in Ukraine was, however, never even a war about this bourgeois-democratic right to national self-determination (a right which is itself, in the age of imperialism, a utopian and reactionary fantasy, as with Brexit), let alone a right to free secession - secession from what? - but was clearly a question of two huge imperialist blocs - NATO and China~Russia - butting heads against each other, much as happened, in 1962, in Cuba, when, another Democrat government, that of John F Kennedy, threatened to send the world into nuclear oblivion.
The social-imperialists have tried to blind the labour movement to the reality of this inter-imperialist war, by pretending that it was about the bourgeois-democratic right to national self-determination, and so, also, fraudulently sought legitimacy for their class treachery, in the words of Lenin and Trotsky. It was never that, and even if it were, would not have justified support for the Ukrainian oligarchs and their state, as against support for a revolutionary struggle by Ukrainian workers against them, and against the Russian oligarchs, drawing into that struggle revolutionary Russian workers.
As the lies of the social-imperialists about the class nature of the war became increasingly exposed, they looked for even more flimsy excuses for their position, such as claiming that the war had a dual nature of being both an inter-imperialist and national liberation war, of which they were only supporting the latter, as though this was in any way possible given their size as against the power and role of NATO imperialism, which simply used them as its useful idiots, much as Putin did in relation to those that threw themselves into an idiotic defence of his invasion.
But, at each stage, as Ukraine inevitably proved itself unable to push Russian forces out of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, despite the huge military and financial support given to the Ukrainian state, by NATO, the response was to simply call for even more weapons, to be able to expose the true nature of the conflict as an inter-imperialist war, as the demands to strike into Russia with those devastating weapons grew louder and louder.
But, the social-imperialists in the West have tied themselves to the mast of NATO, just as the social-chauvinists in Ukraine have done, as they capitulated at the feet of their own imperialist ruling classes. Most of them will not recant or undertake any self-criticism as their betrayals - and we have to describe them, now, as betrayals rather than simply mistakes - become glaringly exposed. They will double down on their demands and betrayal, as Biden seeks to drag the world into a nuclear armed WWIII, in his final days, before Trump replaces him.
It is an indication of the surreal nature of the current state of politics when even Trump looks more rational!
It may, or may not be the case that, having produced this new value, and surplus value, by their labour, the capitals that employ these workers do not realise that surplus value, in the value of their output, but that is true of all capitals. Likewise, the opposite may be true. As the most powerful monopolies, state capitals, as with any other monopoly, may use their power to obtain a larger share of total surplus value than the average. In other words, they charge prices above the price of production of their output, and so obtain surplus/monopoly profits. However, the consequence of that is that other capitals, then, have to share out the remaining surplus value, and so obtain less than the average rate of profit. In both cases, whether it is a state or non-state monopoly, the consequence is not a change in the mass of surplus-value, it is neither increased, nor diminished, and nor could it be, but is simply distributed differently.
Either way, the surplus value produced by the state workers does not simply disappear! Suppose we take a state owned coal industry. The state capital comprises let us say £1 billion of constant capital, £100 million of variable-capital, and with a 100% rate of surplus value, it creates £100 million of surplus value. In other words, the miners are paid £100 million in wages, which is equal to commodities that require 6 months to produce, whilst the miners work for a year, creating a year of new value, equal to 6 months of surplus value. In fact, this capital, like any other large-scale, socialised capital does not require any drain from existing surplus value, via taxation by the state. The state can simply issue bonds, as any other such enterprise does, to obtain the initial money-capital, and as for the output, it is bought directly by consumers, be they other businesses, or households. It, then, pays the interest on these bonds out of the £100 million of profit, it makes, each year, again, like any other business.
Firstly, is it true, as Roberts claims, that “capital is so opposed to state spending and investment and in favour of privatisation”, in such a case? Clearly not, which is why, after WWII, the British state nationalised the coal mines, along with many other staple industries, vital to the interests of British capital as a whole, and sank billions of pounds of investment into them. (More recently, after 2008, it also nationalised the banks, but without the socialist transformation the Militant previously assumed would follow). In fact, when, after the 1980's, those industries were privatised, they quickly disappeared, but for quite different reasons!
Moreover, Roberts' argument is very peculiar, because, if we look at the other privatised industries, such as railways, water companies, electricity companies, the shares in these companies are now owned by foreign, state-owned companies!!! Does Roberts think that there is something different about capital in these other countries, where the role of the state in developing the accumulation of capital has, from the start, played a significant role? This issue of the difference between the real industrial capital, as against the shares in those companies (fictitious-capital) I have dealt with elsewhere. Suffice it to say, here, that the real unproductive drain on the surplus value produced by workers, and realised as profit by this capital, is not the state, but is the excessive amounts paid out as interest/dividends to share and bondholders, which results from the fact that, as ruling class, the bourgeoisie assigned to itself, in company law, control over property, socialised capital, it does not own.
The means of ending that conflict was the victory of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie, a victory by which it would exercise control over its collective property, in the form of the large-scale, socialised capital, a capital, which, in the age of imperialism, had itself grown to such proportions that it necessarily had broken out of the fetters imposed on it by the nation state, and had become multinational, and transnational, in the form of the multinational corporations. It stands in opposition to the attempts to pursue the idea of national independence, national self-determination, the independent nation state, which are utopian, and reactionary ventures, as much as the attempts of the old moral socialists to hold back capitalist development in favour of small, independent commodity producers.
“The earlier Socialism certainly criticized the existing capitalistic mode of production and its consequences. But it could not explain this mode of production, and, therefore, could not get the mastery of it. It could only simply reject it as evil. [The more violently it denounced the exploitations of the working-class, which is inseparable from capitalism, the less able was it clearly to show in what this exploitation consists and how it arises.” (p 33-4)
Similarly, the more violently today's moral socialists decry the evils of “imperialism”, and argue for the self-determination of nation states, and national independence, the more it shows that they have not grasped the nature of imperialism, the less able are they to explain the basis of it, and to understand why the self-determination of the nation state, national independence and so on, are not only impossible, but are, now reactionary.
“But for this it was necessary, on the one hand, to present the capitalistic mode of production in its historical interconnection and its necessity for a particular historical period, and therefore, also, the necessity of its doom; and, on the other, to lay bare its essential character, which was still hidden, as its critics had hitherto attacked its evil consequences rather than the process as such.” (p 34)
And, so too for imperialism, as the highest stage of capitalism. As Trotsky set out in The Program of Peace, imperialism represents the progressive development of capitalism, on an international scale, as it requires ever larger single markets for its scale of production, and consequently ever larger states, which must, necessarily, be multinational rather than nation states. Just as the moral socialist demands of the Sismondists and Narodniks, to hold back large-scale capitalist development were utopian and reactionary, so too, in the age of imperialism, the demand for a continuation of, or return to the nation state, for national independence, and national self-determination is both utopian and reactionary.
Marx showed that the fundamental contradiction between wage-labour and capital rested upon the production of surplus value by the labourer, and its appropriation by the industrial capitalist. This fundamental, scientific discovery, by Marx, swept away all of the previous notions about profits and exploitation based upon cheating, unequal exchange, monopoly and so on, all of which reside within the realm of distribution rather than production.
“It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labour is the basic form of the capitalist mode of production and of the exploitation of the worker effected by it; that even if the capitalist buys the labour power of his worker at the full value it possesses as a commodity on the market, he still extracts more value from it than he paid for; and that in the last analysis, this surplus-value forms those sums of value from which there is heaped up the constantly increasing mass of capital in the hands of the possessing classes. The process both of capitalist production and of the production of capital was explained.” (p 34)
Moreover, because capitalist production is the production and sale of commodities, which implies the existence of markets and competition, that competition necessitates the maximisation of profits, so as to maximise capital accumulation, because it is that accumulation that enables each capital to grab market share, to produce on a larger scale, and, thereby to reduce its costs, so as to undercut its rivals. Even when capital takes the form of socialised capital, collectively owned by the workers, therefore, this fundamental requirement remains.
The idea that this exploitation and antagonism was driven by “greedy capitalists”, was, thereby, demolished, and its actual objective, material basis exposed. Similarly, the idea of the mercantilists, based on the previous domination of merchant and interest-bearing capital, that saw profits as deriving from unequal exchange and monopoly, was also demolished by Marx. Unfortunately, in the latter half of the 20th century, many of these idealist and reactionary ideas re-emerged, on the back of the role of Stalinism, and of a resurgence of the petty-bourgeoisie, most notably in relation to petty-bourgeois nationalism, and “anti-imperialism”, as well as a reactionary, petty-bourgeois “anti-capitalism”.
Stalinism sought, via the popular front to ally itself with various reactionary, petty-bourgeois, nationalist movements and regimes, as the anti-colonial revolutions took place. Much as with the Sismondists, and Narodniks, the idea was put forward that capitalism/imperialism represented some divergence from a natural path, imposed on these developing economies by “imperialism”, and that some alternative, “non-capitalist” path of development was possible. But, as Trotsky pointed out, in relation to Mexico, even for state capitalism, capital is required, and the source of much of that capital is from the multinational corporations.
As Stalinism and this reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalism sought to distract from the vicious exploitation of the masses by these nationalist regimes, and their domestic ruling classes, so they reverted, also, to those old mercantilist explanations of profit as deriving from cheating, monopoly, and unequal exchange by imperialism. A petty-bourgeois, studentist, New Left that grew amidst the proliferation of these ideas, alongside those “anti-imperialist” struggles, also enabled these reactionary notions, and made them its own. That degeneration of socialist ideas to the level of pre-Marxist, moral socialism, makes an examination of Anti-Duhring, more important, now, than ever.
