SNNS 33

 

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 27

Elsewhere, I have set out the way in which a rise in productivity results in a release of capital. In other words, the opposite condition applies to that set out above. Higher productivity results in a fall in unit values, i.e. more use-values are produced by a given amount of labour, so that each unit contains less labour/value. That lower unit value, means that each unit of output has a lower value than the unit value/historic cost of the same use-values used in production, as inputs. Looked at in the same context as that set out above, as a snapshot, this seems to result in a reduction in the mass of profit, and fall in the rate of profit, just as, in the case of a crop failure, the reverse seems to be true. But, again, that is an illusion caused by a focus on money values/prices.

A rise in productivity, resulting in lower unit values, gives the appearance, if only a single year is considered, of reducing profit, but represents only a capital loss – the most obvious example of that is Marx's analysis of moral depreciation. But, on the basis of continuing production, this rise in productivity, and fall in unit values, means that a smaller portion of total output is required to replace the consumed constant and variable capital. It produces a release of capital. Although this release of capital manifests as an increase in profit, it is again, an illusion. But, the fact that it also reduces the value of labour-power means that it does raise the rate of surplus value, and so does raise the mass of profit. Moreover, any given mass of profit, now, represents a higher rate of profit, because the value of c and v are reduced, so that s/(c +v) rises. This is what happened in the 1980's and 90's.

The Physiocrats made the same mistake of failing to distinguish between labour and labour-power that continues in the work of Smith, and is found in the work of Proudhon. It manifests differently, because the Physiocrats were concerned with use-values, whereas Smith was concerned with values – though, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Smith, also, slips back into Physiocracy in places. The Physiocrats argued, as set out above, that 1,000 tons of corn is used as seed (constant capital), 1,000 tons as wages (variable-capital), but 3,000 tons is the output, with the 1,000 tons surplus mystically arising from the land, providing the basis for the owner of the land to obtain rent.

But, as set out earlier, this assumes that the 1,000 tons of corn paid as wages, which is equal to a value of 1,000 hours of labour, or £10,000, is the same as the new value created by that labour. It isn't. The value of labour-power, the use-value of being able to perform labour, is equal to the value of the 1,000 tons of corn required to reproduce that labour-power, i.e. is equal to 1,000 hours of labour. The workers, however, perform not this 1,000 hours required to reproduce their labour-power, but 2,000 hours, 1,000 hours of surplus labour, manifest in the surplus product of 1,000 tons of corn.

Suppose we go back to an initial condition where, as noted earlier, Nature provides its gifts freely. In other words, we have Nature, by its own evolutionary processes creating corn. Early humans are able to consume this corn, just as cows consume grass in a field, as a use-value, gratis. It has no value, no labour has been expended on its production. Value is just the label, the scientific term we give to this labour required to take the free gifts of Nature, and to enhance them, by transforming them in some way. It may be, for example, taking the seeds from plants, and, instead of relying on Nature to cast them, haphazardly, we plant them in dedicated areas, and tend them so as to raise the output.

In this case, we start with seed corn that has no value, no labour has been spent on it. To use the terms applicable to capitalist production c = 0. But, the first farmers must collect the seed, they must create seed drills into which they plant the seeds, and they must cultivate the seed, watering it and so on. This is labour over and above what is required simply to consume, i.e. to reproduce their labour-power (necessary labour).  If they collect a ton of seed, which, left to Nature, would have produced 2 tons of corn, and, by cultivating it, they may obtain 10 tons of corn. That represents an improvement in their real wealth of 500%.

Back To Part 26

The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 1

Even the miserable, western bourgeois media have been led to discuss the fact that US imperialism, and, thereby, NATO, which is its military instrument, its global body of armed men, which has sought to exercise a monopoly of violence, has engaged in an illegal war against Iran.

In reality, its not the fact that its war against Iran is “illegal”, that concerns dominant sections of the ruling-class, whose concerns are being voiced by sections of the media, but that, like many other aspects of the actions of the Trump regime, they are unthought out, haphazard, and counter-productive. Trump's regime is a mafia regime, focused on the personal enrichment of the Trumpf gang.

Its not that western imperialism is horrified at the fact that US imperialism has engaged in an illegal war against Iran, and is dragging the rest of NATO into it, because NATO has repeatedly engaged in illegal wars, infringing “international law”, whatever that is supposed to be. International law, like national law, is simply a codification of the objective rules required to ensure the interests of the ruling-class. The state acts as the “executive committee” of that ruling-class, establishing a system of laws and rules that advance and defend the interests of that class, even at the expense of individual members of it.

It establishes a “level playing field”, but, of necessity, that level playing field protects the interests of those best able to take advantage of it. As Engels put it,

“Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours’ Bill was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced — much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades’ Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed — at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case — to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages.”

(Preface to the English Edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England)

A level playing field, establishing laws of conduct, in place of a free for all, chaos and arbitrariness, including, therefore, rules, regulation, minimum standards, and even planning, which the largest capitals had, already, had to adopt for their own effective operation, was wholly in the interests of those large capitals, and acted to disadvantage the smaller less efficient capitals, let alone the petty-bourgeois and peasant producers. Was that a “bad” thing, as the likes of the petty-bourgeois socialists such as Sismondi or Proudhon, argued, or as today's “anti-capitalists” argue? Morally, if you look at the immediate effect on that large mass of those small producers, certainly, a case could be made for saying that it was “bad”, but, as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky set out, this petty-bourgeois moralism ends up being not just utopian, but is also reactionary.

Utopian, because the very same material conditions, and social and historical laws that led to the competition of independent, small commodity producers, becoming increasingly differentiated into larger and smaller producers – what in other contexts is seen as a process of self-organisation, in other words, it is not consciously organised, but arises spontaneously behind their backs, as a result of these unconscious processes and historical laws – are also the same laws that lead to the larger commodity producers becoming capitalist producers, and, then, those capitalist producers being divided into the large, dominant capitalist producers, and the small capitalist producers and petty-bourgeoisie, subordinated to, and ultimately dependent upon the large capitals. As Lenin put it, quoting Hilferding approvingly,

““It is not the business of the proletariat,” writes Hilferding “to contrast the more progressive capitalist policy with that of the now bygone era of free trade and of hostility towards the state. The reply of the proletariat to the economic policy of finance capital, to imperialism, cannot be free trade, but socialism. The aim of proletarian policy cannot today be the ideal of restoring free competition—which has now become a reactionary ideal—but the complete elimination of competition by the abolition of capitalism.””

(Lenin - Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism)

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 26

Elsewhere, I have set out the way in which a rise in productivity results in a release of capital. In other words, the opposite condition applies to that set out above. Higher productivity results in a fall in unit values, i.e. more use-values are produced by a given amount of labour, so that each unit contains less labour/value. That lower unit value, means that each unit of output has a lower value than the unit value/historic cost of the same use-values used in production, as inputs. Looked at in the same context as that set out above, as a snapshot, this seems to result in a reduction in the mass of profit, and fall in the rate of profit, just as, in the case of a crop failure, the reverse seems to be true. But, again, that is an illusion caused by a focus on money values/prices.

A rise in productivity, resulting in lower unit values, gives the appearance, if only a single year is considered, of reducing profit, but represents only a capital loss – the most obvious example of that is Marx's analysis of moral depreciation. But, on the basis of continuing production, this rise in productivity, and fall in unit values, means that a smaller portion of total output is required to replace the consumed constant and variable capital. It produces a release of capital. Although this release of capital manifests as an increase in profit, it is again, an illusion. But, the fact that it also reduces the value of labour-power means that it does raise the rate of surplus value, and so does raise the mass of profit. Moreover, any given mass of profit, now, represents a higher rate of profit, because the value of c and v are reduced, so that s/(c +v) rises. This is what happened in the 1980's and 90's.

The Physiocrats made the same mistake of failing to distinguish between labour and labour-power that continues in the work of Smith, and is found in the work of Proudhon. It manifests differently, because the Physiocrats were concerned with use-values, whereas Smith was concerned with values – though, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Smith, also, slips back into Physiocracy in places. The Physiocrats argued, as set out above, that 1,000 tons of corn is used as seed (constant capital), 1,000 tons as wages (variable-capital), but 3,000 tons is the output, with the 1,000 tons surplus mystically arising from the land, providing the basis for he owner of the land to obtain rent.

But, as set out earlier, this assumes that the 1,000 tons of corn paid as wages, which is equal to a value of 1,000 hours of labour, or £10,000, is the same as the new value created by that labour. It isn't. The value of labour-power, the use-value of being able to perform labour, is equal to the value of the 1,000 tons of corn required to reproduce that labour-power, i.e. is equal to 1,000 hours of labour. The workers, however, perform not this 1,000 hours required to reproduce their labour-power, but 2,000 hours, 1,000 hours of surplus labour, manifest in the surplus product of 1,000 tons of corn.

Suppose we go back to an initial condition where, as noted earlier, Nature provides its gifts freely. In other words, we have nature, by its own evolutionary processes creating corn. Early humans are able to consume this corn, just as cows consume grass in a field, as a use-value, gratis. It has no value, no labour has been expended on its production. Value is just the label, the scientific term we give to this labour required to take the free gifts of Nature, and to enhance them, by transforming them in some way. It may be, for example, taking the seeds from plants, and, instead of relying on Nature to cast them, haphazardly, we plant them in dedicated areas, and tend them so as to raise the output.

In this case, we start with seed corn that has no value, no labour has been spent on it. To use the terms applicable to capitalist production c = 0. But, the first farmers must collect the seed, they must create seed drills into which they plant the seeds, and they must cultivate the seed, watering it and so on. If they collect a ton of seed, which, left to Nature, would have produced 2 tons of corn, by cultivating it, they may obtain 10 tons of corn. That represents an improvement in their real wealth of 500%.

Back To Part 25

Forward To Part 27

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 25

The greater the amount of surplus labour/value, the greater the potential to a) expand population, and b) to expand the scale of production itself. If we consider, as Marx does, that profit is a historically limited form of this surplus value, then, profit cannot be greater than this surplus-value. It can be less, because, as Marx sets out in Capital III, the surplus value, having been produced, must be realised by the sale of commodities, and that is not guaranteed, but, even if they are sold, at their value, there are lots of costs involved in their circulation, and these costs all represent a deduction from the produced surplus value/profit.

But, then, we can see why this posed a problem for Ramsay, because, if profit equals surplus value, then, a rise in the price of corn, relative to the historic price paid for the seed – corn – appears to produce profit higher than the produced surplus-value. The surplus-value, in the example, was equal to £10,000 (10,000 tons). But, now, if the price of corn rises to £12 per ton, the 3,000 tons sells for £36,000, whilst its cost of production was still only equal to £20,000, a surplus-value of £10,000 now seems to be at odds with a “profit” of £16,000. Ramsay concluded that this additional £6,000 of profit was, thereby, attributable to the constant capital itself.

But, what is the reality? Firstly, as set out earlier, this additional £6,000 of profit is an illusion, and is really just a one-off capital gain. To continue production on the same scale, the farmer, or someone who buys the farm from them, must, now, use £12,000 of the proceeds of the sale of corn, just to replace the seed, whereas, before, it only cost £10,000. Secondly, in this example, wages are equated with corn, as though this is all the workers consume. So, to replace the variable-capital (1,000 tons of corn) the farmer must hand over the same 1,000 tons, but which, also, now, represents a value of £12,000, and not £10,000, as before. Finally, the farmer appropriates the remaining £12,000, but this only enables them to consume the same 1,000 tons of corn as before.

In effect, as I will show, its just money-illusion, with a 20% inflation. If they previously devoted half of their profit to capital accumulation (£2,500 to seed, £2,500 to labour-power), to do so, now, costs them £3,000 for seed and £3,000 for labour-power/wages. But, even this is not the full story.

In this scenario, there are only two commodities, corn and labour-power. If the value/price of corn has risen by 20%, this can only be because productivity has fallen, for example due to a poor harvest, (or else the value of money/or the standard of prices has fallen). In other words, output can no longer be 3,000 tons of corn. In place of money prices, it is best seen by using values, i.e. labour hours. 

Assume that, initially, 1,000 tons of corn is equal to 1,000 hours of labour. In terms of values, then, we had 1,000 c + 1,000 v + 1,000 s. But, as a result of this poor harvest, and fall in productivity, the 1,000 hours of labour contained in the seed, plus the 2,000 hours of new labour performed to turn it into corn, no longer produces 3,000 tons of corn, but something less. For the unit value of corn to rise from £10 per ton to £12 per ton, the 3,000 hours of labour, represented by total output, must result in output of only 2500 tons, equal to £30,000. The unit value rises from 1 hour per ton to 1.2 hours per ton.

So, as Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, although the unit price has risen by 20%, output falls by 16% (1/6). But, Marx notes, the farmer must still replace the consumed 1,000 tons of seed, and the 1,000 tones of corn that forms the variable capital, with these same physical quantities. Capital, as Marx notes, is a social relation, and that social relation only expands as a result of more labour being exploited. Consequently, the surplus product is reduced from 1,000 tons to just 500 tons. Previously, the surplus product represented a third of total output, and a half of the cost of production. Now, it represents only a fifth of total output, and a quarter of the cost of production.

Put another way, the 1,000 tons of surplus product could increase the size of the capital by 50%, whereas, now, it can expand by only 25%. What appeared, superficially, as an increase in the amount of profit, and rise in the rate of profit, measured against the historic cost of production, turns out to be an illusion, and the opposite. The additional money “profit” was simply a capital gain resulting from the rise in the unit value/price of corn. That same rise in unit value/price, resulting from a fall in productivity, actually causes a greater proportion of total output to be needed to reproduce the consumed constant and variable-capital. So, in reality, the mass of profit falls, because the rate of surplus-value falls. Previously, £10,000 advanced as wages produced £20,000 of new value, and so, £10,000 of surplus-value. But, now, the same 1,000 tons of corn (wages) has a value of £12,000. Previously, it represented 1,000 hours of labour, and now represents 1200 hours.

The labour still produces 2000 hours of new value, equal to £20,000, but, now, 1200 hours constitute necessary labour, and only 800 hours surplus labour. The rate of surplus value falls from 100% to 66.6%, and the mass of surplus value from £10,000 to £8,000. But, as Marx sets out, even if we disregard this fall in the rate of surplus value, and consequent reduction in the mass of surplus value, the rate of profit would still fall. Previously, surplus value represented 100% of the value of constant capital (seed). But, even assuming it remained at 1000 hours (£10,000) the seed, now, has a value of £12,000, so that the profit represents only 5/6 of its value.

Back To Part 24

Forward To Part 26

Greens Rampant, Labour Repugnant

The attempts of the establishment an its media to foster the illusion that Labour was still in with a chance of winning the Gorton & Denton by-election inevitably failed. It was always a two-horse race between Greens and Reform, and increasingly, as I have set out before, that will be the case in coming elections, too. In Scotland and Wales, that will take the form of a two-horse race between SNP and Reform, and Plaid and Reform, respectively. The only question in this by-election was whether Greens or Reform would win, and by how much? In turn, as Reform has, now, peaked that turned on just by how much Labour's vote collapsed.

In the end, it wasn't even close. The Green's secured 40% of the vote, the kind of figure that, in a two-party system, is required to win elections. They won by 4,000 votes, thereby, also cutting off any rational basis for the inevitable attempts to claim that they only won, because of some ballot rigging and shenanigans, or that it was all due to the Greens mobilising some sectarian Muslim vote. Reform, of course, has still tried to do that, digging up some “independent” group that no one had heard of called “Democracy Volunteers”, who, after the vote had ended, claimed they had witnessed instances of “family voting”.

As the professional election officials in Manchester noted, if the “Democracy Volunteers” had witnessed such activity, which is a criminal offence, why did they not draw it to the attention of the responsible officials as it was occurring, including, thereby, the police? Anyone who has worked on polling duty, or who has been a candidate in an election, knows that its highly unlikely, because the officials have to hand ballot papers individually to voters, and are able from their seats to monitor the voting booths, to be able to see if anyone else other than the voter enters them. There will, no doubt, be some further investigation of the claims, but it also invites an investigation into just who the “volunteers” were, who made these belated claims.

The size of the Greens win, however, means that not even Reform have been able to claim that, were they valid, they would change the result. That Reform has still pressed them simply shows them up as bad losers, and more concerned to simply whip up Islamophobic hysteria. They have not been alone, however. Labour, also, as it must have known it was going to lose, looked for excuses and scapegoats. They attacked the Greens for putting out literature in Urdu! In the past, not only has Labour put out its literature in the language of the communities whose votes it was seeking, but so do local councils, and other organisations. If you are serious about wanting to be inclusive, then, why would you not seek to communicate with those communities in their own language, in order to include and integrate them? But, of course, the media, also, fell in with the meme of suggesting that there was something unusual and sinister in such actions.

Labour also showed that its desperation has reached new levels, leading to its politics and methods sinking even further into the sewers. As it saw its strategy and its vote collapse to the Greens, it put out a leaflet from a made up organisation, to claim that the latest polls suggested that only a vote for Labour could beat Reform. Together with sending a van around the streets with a picture of Polanski and Spencer, claiming that they wanted to turn over families daughters to prostitution, they also, put out leaflets claiming that they wanted to lead them into drug addiction by legalising all drugs. That's the same argument used by the old reactionaries to claim that arguing for legalising abortion amounts to encouraging it, or encouraging girls to have sex, and, before that, it was used to argue against sex education, and contraception.

Labour also attacked the Greens for putting out leaflets of Starmer with Modi and Netanyahu. But, if Starmer and his government are proud of their relationships with these vile reactionary nationalist regimes, why would they object to anyone publicising them. Those behind Blue Labour, of course, seemed to have no problem with using similar images of Jeremy Corbyn, standing alongside representatives of Hamas, Hezbollah and so on. Labour, also, seems to have forgotten that it put out election leaflets showing Boris Johnson standing alongside Modi, with an explicit message attached to it.

Labour has sunk to new depths, and to try to cling on, it simply lies each time it opens its mouth. 

As I wrote recently, all this shows is that class remains the basis of political interests and ideas. The petty-bourgeoisie, formerly, provided the core support for the Conservatives, but the Conservative Party, in government, never represented their interests, other than in the sense that the petty-bourgeois, always looked up towards the bourgeoisie, and hoped to join them in due course. The organised working-class always formed the core support for Labour, but it never represented their interests in government, other than in mollifying the worst aspects of their exploitation and oppression, and a continual promise of “jam tomorrow”, based on the idea that the interests of workers was, also, for a successful expansion of capital.

That relationship has not changed, it has simply changed the labels on the parties. The petty-bourgeoisie, hugely increased in numbers, but also driven, since the 1980's, into increased levels of poverty and precarity, lost hope in its interests being pursued by the Conservatives, and so it split away to be transformed into Reform. Blue Labour sought to chase after a mirage. It confused poverty with class seeing the least affluent, most precarious sections of society, the petty-bourgeois, with working-class, which they never were or will be, any more than, in the past, the peasantry were part of the working-class. Their ideas, their interests are and always will be, self-centred, individualistic, and determined by their relation to the means of production, the fact that they own them, but that, given their dwarfish nature, they are always led to the most crude means of being competitive. They are, inimical to the interests of the working-class.

Yet, Blue Labour made the quest for the votes of these reactionary, petty-bourgeois, and their associated layers within the ranks of the lumpen, and backward sections of unorganised workers, the centre of its strategy, if it even merits such a designation. The idea that the vote for Brexit could be equated, in the so called “Red Wall” seats, with the vote of working-class, Labour voters, was always a fallacy. In those seats, the working-class, Labour voters, much as elsewhere, voted overwhelmingly to Remain – around 60-70%. Those areas voted Leave, not because of support from a majority of working-class, Labour voters, but because of a solid vote from that petty-bourgeoisie, including many who usually do not bother to even vote.

By chasing an illusion, and, so, when Farage says “jump”, Starmer has simply asked “how high?”, Labour failed, inevitably, to win the votes of that reactionary petty-bourgeois mass that has never been the base of the Labour vote, and which simply transferred from Tory to Reform, but, also, turned away in their droves, the actual working-class base of Labour support. By even abandoning the mild social-democratic agenda of Labour of the previous 80 years, Starmer's Labour cut off any chance of securing that actual working-class base, seen in the fact that, whilst Corbyn brought much of that support back, in 2017, Blue Labour has dissipated it all.

The only thing that saved Starmer in 2024 was the fact that the rebranding of Toryism into Reform was not complete, so that the petty-bourgeois, Tory/Reform vote was split, allowing Labour to win, with an historically low number of votes, and low share of the votes. That process is now playing out with Labour too. Gorton and Denton shows that the old inertia, together with the efforts of the media to portray Labour as still having hope of winning, enabled it to retain support. But, that illusion has been shattered. It went from winning the seat with more than 50% of the vote (in the past it had 60% of the vote) in 2024, to third place, and its vote share being halved. The fate of the Tories simply shows it the future. The Tories lost their deposit.

In election after election, now, the argument that only Labour can defeat Reform cannot credibly be made. On the contrary, the argument, now, becomes, only the Greens (also read, SNP, Plaid) can defeat Reform, and a vote for Labour is a wasted vote. Reform, much as with Trump in the US, has peaked, as the support for such petty-bourgeois parties always does. But, that does not benefit Labour which has simply attempted to present itself as its pale shadow. It means that, in the period ahead, in elections at least, it will be the Greens that play the role that, in the past, was played by Labour.

SNNS 32