Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, II – Theoretical - Part 13

This introduces a further contradiction, which is obscured by the fact that, other than in the worker-cooperative, control over the socialised capital is exercised, not by its collective owners (the associated producers, i.e. the workers), but by a section of its creditors, i.e. the shareholders. That is true of a consumer cooperative and a nationalised industry, just as much as with a limited company. Indeed, with nationalised companies, the state, although the only shareholder, itself obtains the money-capital by borrowing on the bond markets, giving the private owners of fictitious capital an indirect influence on those companies.

Similarly, the Directors of those companies are appointed to represent the interest of the state as shareholder/creditor, and not the interests of the company – let alone its workers, as the real collective owners of it. It is no surprise, then, when the state appoints the very same Directors that circulate around the boards of limited companies, to carry out that role.

Marx points out that, in relation to the joint-stock companies, the revenues (new value created) resolve into wages, rent, interest and profit of enterprise, as with all industrial capitals. But, the fact that these companies employ professional managers, who act as “functioning capitalists”, means that the actual payments do not coincide with these revenues. A part of what is actually profit of enterprise/retained profit, which should be available for capital accumulation, as the property of the company, instead appears as “wages” for some of the company Directors, and, also, appears as “interest/dividends” to shareholders.

In these socialised capitals, the professional managers, or “functioning capitalists”, i.e. those that perform the functions of entrepreneur, by bringing together the factors of production efficiently, exercising day to day control over production, distribution, sales and marketing, etc., are drawn from the working-class, which is why this industrial capital, in its imperialist phase, requires an extension of “free” public education, to ensure the supply of this managerial/administrative/scientific/technical labour-power. Again, these welfarist concepts, associated with social-democracy, mushroomed from the latter part of the 19th century.

“The general relaxation of conventional barriers, the increased facilities of education tend to bring down the wages of skilled labour instead of raising those of the unskilled." (J. St. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 2nd ed., London, 1849, I, p. 479.)”

(Capital III, Chapter 23, Note 79, p 389)

As Marx sets out, these actual functioning capitalists/professional managers etc., who are the personification of this socialised capital, are not to be confused with the Directors and CEO's, CIO's etc., that are set in place by shareholders to sit above them. For these Boards, as representatives of the shareholders, the actual functioning capitalists, are a potential threat to the interest payments and fictitious wealth of the ruling-class/shareholders.

“On the basis of capitalist production a new swindle develops in stock enterprises with respect to wages of management, in that boards of numerous managers or directors are placed above the actual director, for whom supervision and management serve only as a pretext to plunder the stockholders and amass wealth. Very curious details concerning this are to be found in The City or the Physiology of London Business; with Sketches on Change, and the Coffee Houses, London, 1845.

'What bankers and merchants gain by the direction of eight or nine different companies, may be seen from the following illustration: The private balance sheet of Mr. Timothy Abraham Curtis, presented to the Court of Bankruptcy when that gentleman failed, exhibited a sample of the income netted from directorship ... between £800 and £900 a year. Mr. Curtis having been associated with the Courts of the Bank of England, and the East India House, it was considered quite a plum for a public company to acquire his services in the boardroom' (pp. 81, 82).

The remuneration of the directors of such companies for each weekly meeting is at least one guinea. The proceedings of the Court of Bankruptcy show that these wages of supervision were, as a rule, inversely proportional to the actual supervision performed by these nominal directors.”

(ibid)

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, II – Theoretical - Part 12

In other words, the accumulated stock of fixed capital has assumed mammoth proportions. Any large scale technological revolution that causes a significant moral depreciation of fixed capital brings about a big capital loss for the owners of that fixed capital. At the same time, however, this same fact of the mammoth scale of the fixed capital, relative to the circulating capital, means that, each year, as the fixed capital reduces in value – not from depreciation but from wear and tear – it brings about a corresponding rise in the rate of profit, for the firms using this existing fixed capital.

Large-scale socialised capital, therefore, has an interest in ensuring that this fixed capital can be fully and continuously employed, over a long duration, so that it recover its value in wear and tear, as quickly as possible. So, this socialised capital, whether controlled by workers or shareholders, requires the kind of long-term planning, and attempts to achieve stability, that social-democracy represents. As Engels put it in the Critique of The Erfurt Programme,

“I am familiar with capitalist production as a social form, or an economic phase; capitalist private production being a phenomenon which in one form or another is encountered in that phase. What is capitalist private production? Production by separate entrepreneurs, which is increasingly becoming an exception. Capitalist production by joint-stock companies is no longer private production but production on behalf of many associated people. And when we pass on from joint-stock companies to trusts, which dominate and monopolise whole branches of industry, this puts an end not only to private production but also to planlessness.”

The position of shareholders is, then, typically contradictory. Like the private industrial capitalists, and unlike the workers, they only see a justification in the introduction of machines/technology, where the cost is lower than the wages saved. But, like the worker and unlike the private industrial capitalist, they see the need to plan production, and, via the capitalist state, the economy so as to avoid crises. Publicly, of course, they proclaim their belief in the free market, and opposition to central planning, except, of course, when it comes to the central planning done by central banks, and their belief that such institutions can control the price of capital! In the heyday of imperialist capital in the 1930's to the mid 1970's, the ruling class made no secret of their corporatist belief in such economic planning.

As owners of fictitious-capital, (interest-bearing capital, i.e. shares, bonds etc.) shareholders stand in a contradictory and antagonistic relation to the owners of industrial capital, be they private industrial capitalists or the workers/associated producers as collective owners of socialised capital (again be it in the form of a cooperative, joint stock company/corporation etc.) As Marx notes in Capital III, Chapter 23,

“It is indeed only the separation of capitalists into money-capitalists and industrial capitalists that transforms a portion of the profit into interest, that generally creates the category of interest; and it is only the competition between these two kinds of capitalists which creates the rate of interest...

“The lending capitalist as such faces the capitalist performing his actual function in the process of reproduction, not the wage-worker, who, precisely under capitalist production, is expropriated of the means of production. Interest-bearing capital is capital as property as distinct from capital as a function. But so long as capital does not perform its function, it does not exploit labourers and does not come into opposition to labour.

On the other hand, profit of enterprise is not related as an opposite to wage-labour, but only to interest.”

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SNNS 62

 

Northern Soul Classics - Hungry For Love - The San Remo Strings

 

Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, II – Theoretical - Part 11

Even within the laws of capital, however, it can be seen how, if workers exercised control over their collective property/socialised capital, this would be modified. Marx and Engels explain, in Capital III, Chapter 15, that the private industrial capitalists only introduce machines where the cost of the machine is less than the wages they save from its introduction. If the new value created by labour is, say, equal to £100, but resolves into £20 wages and £80 profit, the machine must cost less than £20.

Marx and Engels note that, in the worker cooperatives, this is not the case. For the worker, the criterion for introducing a new machine/technology is only that its value is less than the labour-time it saves. If an hour's labour is equal to £10, so that the £100 of new value, above, is equal to 10 hours of labour, a machine can be introduced if its value is less than £100. This is the difference between the private cost of production, and social cost of production, which is the basis of profit. The social cost of production of the commodity is £100/10 hours labour, but its private cost of production for the capitalist is only what he pays in wages, i.e. £20/2 hours labour.

For society, anything that reduces the social cost of production is an advantage, but it does not appear that way to the private capitalist. So, rather than waiting until a crisis of overproduction of capital arises, before engaging in innovation, a cooperative commonwealth would, from the start, have an incentive to be continually innovating, so as to reduce the burden of labour, raise productivity, and, thereby, increase real social wealth. Marx points out that that was seen in the Lancashire textile cooperatives, and Connolly noted the same with the agricultural cooperative at Ralahine.

What is true of the worker cooperative is, also, true of the other forms of socialised capital. In the joint-stock company/corporation, the workers within it, as the collective owners of that capital, have the same motivation for innovation as those in the worker cooperative. The difference is that the ruling-class deny that right to them, deny them the right to control their own collective property and, instead, place it in the hands of shareholders, whose interests are quite different. Shareholders see things in the same way as the private industrial capitalist, in so far as the use of machines/technology is concerned, but, as the size of fixed capital has become so astronomical, also, understand that the investment time-horizon has become significantly extended.

Marx, also, refers to this in, Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 23.

“Thus there can be no doubt that in the case of all capitals employing a great deal of fixed capital—provided the scale of production remains unchanged—the rate of profit must rise in proportion as the value of the machinery, the fixed capital, declines annually, because wear and tear has already been taken into account. If the coal producer sells his coal at the same price throughout the ten years, then his rate of profit must be higher in the second year than it was in the first and so forth...

“This extra profit may be equalised also as a result of the fact that—apart from wear and tear—the value of fixed capital falls in the course of time, because it has to compete with new, more recently invented, better machinery. On the other hand this rising rate of profit, which results naturally from wear and tear, makes it possible for the declining value of the fixed capital to compete with newer, better machinery, the full value of which has still to be taken into account. Finally, the coal producer sold his coal more cheaply [at the end of the second year], on the basis of the following calculation: 50 on 100 means 50 per cent profit, 50 per cent on 95 comes to 47½ ; if therefore he sold the same quantity of coal [not for 105 but] for 102½—then he would have sold it more cheaply than the man whose machinery, for example, began to operate only in the current year. Large installations of fixed capital presuppose possession of large amounts of capital. And since these big owners of capital dominate the market, it appears that only for this reason their enterprises yield surplus profit (rent). In the case of agriculture, this rent derives from working relatively fertile land, but here we are dealing with a case where relatively cheaper machinery is utilised.}”

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 23, p 388-389)

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, II – Theoretical - Part 10

With privately owned industrial capital, such conditions enable the capitalists to gradually expand their business. They expand, at first, by replacing their older machines, as they wear out, with the newer, more productive, machines/technology. That is intensive accumulation, and leads to rising levels of productivity and rates of profit. In addition, the existence of cheap labour-power, and low rates of interest encourages new entrepreneurs to chance their arm, often in new types of production.

Over time, the majority of the old machines/technology, gets replaced by the new machines/technology, so that the rise in productivity slows down. To increase production, now, each firm must not juts replace the worn out machines, but invest in additional machines, and additional workers to operate them. This is now extensive accumulation. The demand for labour rises until again a relative shortage is created, wages rise – itself leading to a more rapid rise in the demand for wage goods, and consequently in aggregate demand, as firms scrabble to capture their share of the growing market – and, eventually, profits are squeezed.

More of the profit must be retained for accumulation, proportionally less is thrown into the money market, and, indeed, firms must enter the money market, themselves, to borrow. They must take out bank loans, issue bonds and debentures etc. The demand for loanable money-capital relative to its supply rises, interest rates rise, asset prices fall.

Eventually, wages rise to a level where a new crisis of overproduction of capital relative to labour arises. The rate of profit drops sharply. The less efficient firms cannot even make profit. They must borrow now, not to invest but simply to pay their bills. The rate of interest reaches its highest level. They go bust and lay off their workers so that a surplus of capital is now accompanied by a surplus of labour. The firms and their workers no longer appear in the market as consumers of commodities. There is under-consumption, so that there is now an overproduction of commodities, as well as capital and labour. The cycle begins again.

To overcome the overproduction of capital, capital, as a whole, engages in a new technological revolution. Productivity and profits, and the rate of profit rise. The long-wave cycle, now witnessed five times, applies, also, to socialised capitals. A new, long-wave uptrend began around 1890, as socialised capital began to supplant the monopoly of private capital. During this period, after 1890, we also see the rapid expansion of the organised labour movement, on the basis of social-democracy.

It is, of course, in workers' interest, as Marx sets out in Wage-Labour and Capital, for capital to continue to accumulate, because it is under those conditions that the demand for labour is high, and so wages rise. As, objectively, the collective owners of that socialised capital, they have every reason to want to ensure such continued expansion. But, so long as those means of production exist as capital, so long as production and distribution is determined by the market, by exchange-value, rather than use-value, the same laws of capital will continue to repeat this cycle.

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Anti-Duhring, Part III – Socialism, II – Theoretical - Part 9

Marx was only led even to this conclusion, in relation to the value of the materials, because he saw the reduction in its value, being limited by its nature as derived from agriculture.

“... some kinds of raw materials, such as wool, silk, leather, are produced by animal organic processes, while cotton, linen, etc., are produced by vegetable organic processes and capitalist production has not yet succeeded, and never will succeed in mastering these processes in the same way as it has mastered purely mechanical or inorganic chemical processes. Raw materials such as skins, etc., and other animal products become dearer partly because the insipid law of rent increases the value of these products as civilisation advances. As far as coal and metal (wood) are concerned, they become much cheaper with the advance of production; this will however become more difficult as mines are exhausted, etc.”

(ibid)

But, as I have set out elsewhere, not only does Marx set out some of the factors that contradict that conclusion, such as the reduction in waste, the use of new materials, improved use of auxiliary materials (particularly energy), but the introduction of synthetic materials, changes in the types of commodities and so on, mean that even this argument for a rising organic composition does not hold. Still less does it hold, in economies where the main production of value and surplus value, has moved to service industries rather than manufacture.

So, there is, really, no basis for arguing that c rises relative to v + s, in the long run, and so no basis for any significant tendency for the rate of profit to fall. However, there is, for these same reasons, a very good basis for there being a regular cycle in which the rate of profit rises and falls, because it is squeezed by a rise in relative wages, as industrial capital grows faster than the supply of labour/social working-day, a crisis of overproduction of capital relative to labour, as Marx describes it in Capital III, Chapter 15.

“As soon as capital would, therefore, have grown in such a ratio to the labouring population that neither the absolute working-time supplied by this population, nor the relative surplus working-time, could be expanded any further (this last would not be feasible at any rate in the case when the demand for labour were so strong that there were a tendency for wages to rise); at a point, therefore, when the increased capital produced just as much, or even less, surplus-value than it did before its increase, there would be absolute over-production of capital; i.e., the increased capital C + ΔC would produce no more, or even less, profit than capital C before its expansion by ΔC. In both cases there would be a steep and sudden fall in the general rate of profit, but this time due to a change in the composition of capital not caused by the development of the productive forces, but rather by a rise in the money-value of the variable capital (because of increased wages) and the corresponding reduction in the proportion of surplus-labour to necessary labour.”

If we go back to Marx's analysis of relative surplus value in Capital I, the first form, as set out, has limited life, because other producers adopt the same machine/technology. However, Marx explains that relative surplus value has a second form. If the value of wage goods fall, as a result of the rise in productivity, a smaller portion of the working-day is taken up as necessary labour. A larger proportion is, now, surplus labour. The rate of surplus value rises. For this to resolve a crisis of overproduction of capital, relative to labour supply it must be a generalised technological revolution, not just a piecemeal change in one or two industries. That is what happens with the introduction of steam engines, electric motors, internal combustion engines, assembly lines, and with microchips.

After each of these generalised technological revolutions, the crisis of overproduction of capital, relative to labour, reverses. It becomes a crisis for labour, which is, now, again, overproduced relative to capital. A relative surplus population. The surplus or net product rises, relative to the gross product, creating a period of relatively slower growth. As profit, the money equivalent of the surplus product, rises, whilst gross output grows at slower pace, the rate of interest falls (because the supply of this loanable money-capital, thereby, rises, relative to the demand for it for capital accumulation). It causes asset pries and speculation to rise, leading to asset price bubbles.

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