Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 23

In this can be seen Marx's analysis and explanation of the tie-up and release of capital, in response to the error of Ramsay, and the illusion created of an increase or fall in profit, which was nothing but, on the one hand, a capital gain/loss, or on the other, a release/tie-up of capital. Ramsay, and the TSSI makes the same error, saw a rise in corn prices, during the year, which results in a capital gain for the given farmer, as being a “profit”, arising simply from the constant capital, i.e. the the seed corn, whose price rose relative to its “historic cost”. The farmer bought seed corn at the “historic cost” of of £10 a ton, and sells it at £12 a ton, a “profit” of £2 a ton that mysteriously appears from nowhere.

But, as Marx points out, the illusion of this “profit” from nowhere depends on us viewing matters in the purely isolated terms that Ramsay and the TSSI do. If, like Ramsay and the TSSI, we take the individual farmer and just this one year, then, yes, if they stopped production at the end of the year, they would have, say, 1,000 tons of corn, with a value of £12,000, for which they had only paid £10,000, leaving them with a £2,000 “profit”. But, Marx points out that this static picture, a snapshot in time, is not the end of the matter, in reality.

If the farmer did not discontinue production, and mostly farmers do not cease production after one year, then, rather than having to advance £10,000 for seed corn, they have to advance £12,000. The apparent £2,000 of profit has immediately disappeared, and is not available to them either to increase their personal consumption or to accumulate capital. Indeed, in terms of the rate of profit, and so the ability to accumulate capital, it would have been diminished.

Suppose the farmer starts with the seed corn amounting to 1,000 tons, with an historic price of of £10 per ton, i.e. £10,000. The above illustration simply assumed that, at the end of the year, this same 1,000 tons has a monetary value of £12,000, producing a “profit” of £2,000. This is the same logic that fuels speculative asset price bubbles, in which a simple rise in asset prices – shares, bonds, houses – is seen as magically producing a “profit” that can be taken by the owner of the asset. Wealth from thin air. It has been the basis of the economic model of conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) from the 1980's until the global financial crash of 2008, and which it is still desperately trying to sustain. The importance of Marx's analysis, and of the labour theory of value is to show why this is a dangerous delusion. It is a delusion at the heart of the TSSI, and also within MMT, though in different forms.

The situation facing the farmer was not only that they laid out £10,000 for seed corn (1,000 tons) but, also, that they laid out, let us say, £10,000 for wages. Here we come back to the error of the Physiocrats. The Physiocrats saw 1,000 tons of seed corn, and 1,000 tons of corn as wages/labour, resulting in an output of 3,000 tons of corn, a surplus of 1,000 tons. They attributed the surplus to the land, but, as Smith and the Classical Economists showed, this surplus product was not, in fact, some mysterious product of the land but of labour.

In fact, although Smith et al set this out, they did not fully draw out the reality of what they had discovered. In Capital I, Marx explains it, by reference to a group of primitive people who were able to meet their requirements by labouring for only a small number of hours per week. They could reproduce their labour-power by just this expenditure of labour.

“But consider, for example, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests.

'When the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and divided into several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water and filtered: it is then quite fit for use as sago. One tree commonly yields 300 lbs., and occasionally 500 to 600 lbs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread for themselves, just as with us they cut fire-wood.'” [F. Schouw: “Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch,” 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148. ]

(Capital I, Chapter 16)

But, that did not limit the amount of labour they could undertake, the amount of new value they could, thereby, create. This new value, also, thereby, takes the form of a surplus product, in excess of what is required to reproduce their labour-power. It is not the land or some magical property of it that creates the surplus product, but the surplus labour undertaken.  An error of the TSSI is, also, that they confuse this new value produced by labour, which is always positive, with surplus value, which is usually positive, but is so only because the new value created is greater than the value of labour-power.

Similarly, as Marx points out, if the agricultural labourer/farmer only undertook sufficient labour as to produce the 2,000 tons of corn required to reproduce the seed corn consumed, and their own labour-power, their would be no surplus product/value. There would be no possibility of rent, profit, interest or taxes, either in the form of use-values or their money equivalent. The surplus product of 1,000 tons is not the consequence of some mystical property of the land, but of the fact that surplus labour has been undertaken. In order to ensure that this surplus labour is undertaken, the labourer must be denied access to the means of production, unless they do so, by the owner of those means of production. The amount of labour performed in excess of the necessary labour, surplus labour, is the real basis of the surplus-value.

It is not the only basis of the surplus product. As Marx describes in Capital and elsewhere, the basis of the surplus product is both Labour and Nature. Nature provides use-values as free gifts, labour utilises them and transforms them into products that have value. The more bountiful Nature is, in the provision of these free gifts, the more productive is labour, i.e. the more products/use-values it is able to create in a given amount of time. In other words, the lower the unit value of each product. Again, here, we see the constant presence and influence of The Law of Value, as a Natural Law.

Back To Part 22

Could Labour Drop To Fourth in Gorton & Denton By-Election?

The establishment seem to be apoplectic at the thought that the Greens look set to win the by-election in Gorton and Denton, tomorrow.  On the one hand, we have the far-right wing of the establishment such as The Daily Mail, which has followed Trump down the rabbit hole of absurdity, and is now claiming ridiculously, on its front page that the Greens are going to offer illegal migrants a free house.  The claims of the Mail, are an hysterical extension of its long-standing racist lies about preferential treatment for immigrants, going back decades, as it now fears that, not only are the Greens going to beat Labour,, but are set to, also, beat Reform

On the other hand, we have the centrist elements of the establishment, similarly concerned that the Greens might beat Labour from its Left, and might, also beat Reform.  The centrists have no desire for a Reform victory, but they certainly would prefer it over a win for the Greens.  For the last 6 years, Starmer has tagged along behind first the Tories, and, then, their reincarnation as Reform, in a continual ratchet to the reactionary, nationalist Right.  The narrative was created that Reform could only be defeated by Labour, despite the fact that voters were presented with just different shades of reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism and the prospect of increasing attacks on workers' living standards and rights, following Brexit, and attempts to distract them by the usual appeals to rally around the flag on the basis of ridiculous claims about imminent invasion.

A win for the Greens shatters that narrative, and what scares the establishment is that its quite clear that with the Conservatives now destroyed, Labour is headed to the same fate.  The race in Gorton and Denton, formerly a rock solid Labour seat, is solely between Reform and The Greens.  The question is only which of these two parties come out on top, and how badly Labour does, further down the ballot.  Labour further destroyed its chances by blocking Burnhan from standing, in the interests, purely of Starmer's Blue Labour faction, which has wrecked the party, and, is now, reaping the consequences, as it loses its grip.  The same factionalism and cronyism has led to the current scandals around Epstein and Mandelson, which look set to gradually draw in all of those that were a part of that Mandelson cabal.

What the establishment and pundits have failed to recognise is that class based politics, continues to dominate, and to determine voting.  The reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, which, as a class was the bedrock of the Tories/Conservatives has simply shifted to Reform, which is nothing more than a rebranding of the Tories.  The aspiring, professional middle-class fraction of Conservative support, which was the support base of the social-democratic wing of the party, typified by the likes of Heath, Heseltine and Clarke (the Wets) and, consequently, of the interests of large-scale capital, and the EU, has moved to its rational home in the Liberals.  As Blue Labour has abandoned even that kind of conservative, social-democracy, it is unable to attract either those sections of the middle-class, in the way Blair did, or to attract the working-class, on the back of a pursuit of progressive social-democracy, as it did under Attlee, Wilson/Callaghan, or Corbyn.  That working-class/middle-class vote has now gone to the Greens.

According to numerous reports, local Labour activists in Gorton and Denton have already acknowledge that reality, and given up.  Why on Earth, would any rational Labour activist waste their time trudging the streets to advocate a vote for someone and something that the vast majority of them, also, do not support.  Its not like in the past, when activists might do that to support a given candidate, using the contact with voters to, set out their own disagreements with the leadership, and encourage the to join the party, and assist in a struggle to transform it, as for example, we did with the Socialist Campaign for A Labour Victory, in 1979.  Today, Starmer's Bonapartist Blue Labour regime has prevented any such struggle within the party, as seen with the mass expulsions, the imposition from above of candidates, and the blocking of Burnham.  No amount of high profile flying visits to the seat will change that reality, as they try to shore up an illusion.

The progressive working-class vote in the constituency has already moved to the Greens, and all those former Labour voters, can, now, see that to beat Reform the Greens offer the only hope.  They look set to fulfil that hope, which is why the establishment in both its far-right and centrist factions have united to try to stop the Greens.  Labour, has tried to attack the Greens from the opposite direction, with its own sets of lies.  Rather than joining in with the racist lies of the Daily Mail, about Greens giving free houses to illegal migrants and so on, Labour instead have focussed on The Greens opposition to the genocide being committed by the Zionist regime against Palestinians.  Its not that Blue Labour has not mimicked the racist policies of Reform, the Tories and the Mail, but that they know that, in this seat, echoing those particular lies would be likely to lose it even more votes.

And, despite the fact that Polansky is himself Jewish, Blue Labour think that with their ridiculous attacks on his opposition to the genocide, a genocide that Starmer and Blue Labour has denied exists, and which they have armed and supported, they will turn some of those voters against the Greens in that constituency.  No doubt they have blindly looked back to the former Labour MP for Manchester, Gerald Kaufman, but, had they looked more closely, they would have seen that Kaufman was, also, a critic of the kind of politics that the Zionist regime has been undertaking.

Blue Labour has destroyed the Labour Party, much as the same petty-bourgeois nationalists have destroyed the Conservative Party.  In the latter case they have emerged like the monster on Alien, out of the stomach of the Conservatives, now, as Reform, that reality shown by the number of Tory MP's like Jenrick, Jenkyns and so on that now, litter its ranks.  At some point, the same is likely to be true with Blue Labour, as, having destroyed Labour, those elements also, join Reform.  A look at the journey travelled by many of those associated with the likes of Glassman, in the ranks of Spiked Online, shows how easily that is done.

So, the banner of social-democracy has now fallen, by default, into the hands of the Greens, or, in Scotland and Wales, the SNP and Plaid.  To beat Reform, the working-class, and progressive, professional middle-class, now, rationally, have only those parties as a means of doing, so in elections.  In places, the Liberals may, also, offer a similar alternative.  The tragedy, once again, is that socialists have not risen to the task of filling that void.  The labour vote in Gorton has collapsed, and the beneficiaries are the Greens.  To defeat Reform, it will need to collapse completely.  Given the reactionary, anti-working-class nature of Blue Labour, that should not be hard to envisage, and the question now is, will Labour even be able to muster enough votes to beat the Liberals into third place. 

Boris Blows The Gaff

Britain and other states in the NATO imperialist alliance have been ramping up the war rhetoric in recent months, as they prepare to move from the phase of phoney war to hot war, as the drive to World War III accelerates.  They claim that its necessary to massively increase military spending, and, thereby, divert spending away from real capital investment, to improve living standards, because of some supposed imminent military threat to western Europe from Russia.  This is the same Russia, of course, that has been bogged down, just in Eastern Ukraine for the last four years.  There is no indication that Russia poses any immediate, or, for that matter, longer term military threat to western Europe.  It may pose threats in other ways, such as via cyber attacks, and interference in political processes, but that is a different matter, and its hard to see how spending more on weapons deals with that.  What would you do, blow up your own computer systems?

The real military threats to western Europe, in fact, have not come from Russia - or China - but from the US.  Its the US that has threatened to invade Greenland - or was it Iceland as Trump doesn't seem to know the difference.  Its the US that has been bombing one country after another, as well as one of its envoys Mike Huckabee literally threatening biblical hellfire, to justify a Zionist takeover of land "from the river to the sea", as being justified by God in the Bible.  Similarly, Boris Johnson, fresh from having wrecked the British economy with help from his mate Farage, via Brexit, has now blown the gaff on what is going on by blurting out that he wants British troops, now, on the ground, openly in Ukraine, i.e. not Russia knocking at the door of Britain and Western Europe, but vice versa.

Nothing much changes.  In the last couple of hundred years, it has never been Russia, let alone China that has been threatening to invade Britain, France or the rest of western Europe.  It has always been the other way around.  It was Britain and France attacking Russia during the Crimean War, thousands of miles from both Britain and France.  It was France, during the Napoleonic Wars that invaded Russia, not vice versa.  It was Germany that invaded Russia during World War I, and, although Russia fought on the side of the Allies in both world wars, after World War I, it was Britain, France, the US, and a succession of other imperialist powers that invaded Russia in an attempt to overthrow the workers' revolution.

So, when, the USSR fell, and NATO, despite its assurances given to Gorbachev, to get his agreement to German unification, rapidly expanded Eastwards, marching its battalions ever closer to Moscow, the Russian people saw history repeating once again.  Not surprisingly, their reactionary leaders took advantage of that, to enhance their own positions.  Yeltsin the puppet of US imperialism, who presided over the looting of state assets, and immiseration of the population, was replaced by Putin.  So, similarly, when NATO sought to expand further East, first in Georgia, where even western observers noted that Saakashvili engaged in an attempted ethnic cleansing of Russians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and, later in Georgia, its no wonder that the Russian leaders saw the opportunity to mobilise the population behind them.

In Georgia, the Russian troops quickly dispatched the invading Georgian forces, and raced towards the Georgian capital Tbilisi.  Yet, contrary to the narrative being created, today, in respect of Ukraine, having rolled their tanks into Tbilisi, the Russian did not overthrow the government, or occupy Georgia.  Having neutered the Georgian military threat, they withdrew, securing the ethnic Russian populations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  It was no doubt, not a sign of the peaceful, moral nature of Putin's regime, but simply a recognition of the fact that there was nothing to be gained by Russia tying up its forces in Georgia.  Russia will not be conquered in any new imperialist war.  Its stock of nuclear weapons ensures that will not happen.  But, it is a long way from that to the idea that Russia has the military, industrial or economic power to project itself across the globe, or even into western Europe.  Its slow progress in Eastern Ukraine shows that.

Similarly, when NATO pushed forward again into Ukraine, despite the fact that support for NATO membership never rose above 40%, in Ukraine, and the West backed the coup against the pro-Russian government in 2014, it was inevitable that the ethnic Russians in Ukraine, particularly in Eastern Ukraine, which had always voted for closer ties with Russia, would see it as hostile, and that Russia would, again, be led to intervene.  US imperialism/NATO has used this tactic numerous times.  It used its links with Bin Laden to finance and arm the criminal of the KLA to stir up ethnic violence in Kosovo, to provoke intervention by Serbia, for example, which then gave it a pretext to attack Serbia, and split Kosovo away. 

Even then, Russia seeking to avoid a prolonged military commitment, agreed to the Minsk Accords, designed to afford a large degree of self government to the ethnic Russian regions of Eastern Ukraine.  But, Merkel, herself, admitted that the Minsk Accords were always intended to be a farce, designed only to give the Ukrainian state time to build up its forces.  So, in the meantime, the reactionary nationalist regime in Kyiv, not only stepped up its attacks on ethnic Russians, in terms of cultural attacks on the Russian language etc., but never gave any degree of self-government, and used the forces of the Azov Battalion to launch military attacks, shelling and so on of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine.  It gave Putin's reactionary regime no real choice in having to respond.

It is not Russian military forces sitting on the border of the UK or other western European states, ready to invade, it is, as it always has been British, French and other Western European military forces sitting on the border of Russia, and moving forward, wherever they can in what has always been an aggressive expansionist manner, as they seek to get their hands on Russian land and resources.  So, when Boris Johnson basically bemoans the lack of progress of Ukraine in acting as its proxy to that end, despite the vast amounts of weapons and money given to it, he only blows the gaff on the western imperialist strategy all along, as he calls for young British workers to go and, once again lay down their lives for the benefit of the rich and powerful, for the same King and Country that has given you the likes of Prince Andrew, Lord Mandelson and all of the other leeches and perverts.

SNNS 31

 

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 22

Engels (Marx), then, sets out a brief summary of the Tableau. I have dealt with Marx's presentation of it, elsewhere.

“As is known, the physiocrats divide society into three classes: (1) The productive class, i.e., the class which is actually engaged in agriculture — tenant-farmers and agricultural labourers; they are called productive, because their labour yields a surplus: rent. (2) The class which appropriates this surplus, including the landowners and their retainers, the prince and in general all officials paid by the state, and finally also the Church in its special character as appropriator of tithes. For the sake of brevity, in what follows we call the first class simply “farmers”, and the second class “landlords”. (3) The industrial or sterile class; sterile because, in the view of the physiocrats, it adds to the raw materials delivered to it by the productive class only as much value as it consumes in means of subsistence supplied to it by that same class. Quesnay's Tableau was intended to portray how the total annual product of a country (in fact, France) circulates among these three classes and serves annual reproduction.” (p 314)

At this point, its worth summarising what was correct and what was wrong in the Physiocratic theory. What was right was that surplus product/value is created in production, and not in the process of exchange. In that revolutionary discovery, the Physiocrats were ahead of both the Mercantilists, and of today's, orthodox economists, be they neoclassicists, Austrians, Keynesians or post-Keynesians, all of whom see profit arising from the process of exchange, as a “consumer surplus”. Adam Smith recognised this leap forward, made by the Physiocrats, and it formed the basis of his theory, and that of the rest of the Classical School. Again, it put Smith ahead of the Mercantilists, and of the later schools of orthodox economists.

What was wrong with the Physiocratic theory was its explanation of the source of this surplus product/value, created in production. Because, contrary to Duhring, the Physiocrats were primarily concerned with the production and circulation of the physical product/use-values, in a country – France – where agriculture dominated production, their attention focused on the difference between physical inputs and physical outputs.

In agriculture, superficially, this seems obvious. A certain amount of seed corn is planted, a certain amount of corn is fed to the farmer/worker, to reproduce their labour-power. Let us say 1 ton as seed, 1 ton as food for the farmer/labourer. But, at the end of the year, 3 tons of corn are produced, a surplus product of 1 ton. Where has it come from? For the Physiocrats, it is obviously a free gift of the land. Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, that Ramsay makes a similar error. In fact, even in terms of the physical product, the Physiocrats were wrong in thinking that the surplus arose out of nowhere, just from the land.

As well as the seed planted, the final output of corn involves a whole series of chemical processes, whereby other use-values – nutrients from the soil, water from rain, energy from sunlight – are incorporated in it. Its wrong, even on this basis, therefore, to say that the increase in the physical product arises from nowhere. It involves a whole series of processes whereby matter in one form is transformed into matter in a different form. It, also, involves a transformation of energy (sunlight, labour) into matter. So, Marx says, if all of these other use-values are taken into consideration, there is no magical increase in the total product, only a transformation of use-values in one form into use-values in a different form.

This is, in fact, entirely consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. An obvious illustration of this is to look at what happens during a drought. The land no longer magically produces a surplus product. Indeed, it may not even be able to reproduce the inputs themselves. The same is true, where there is not enough sunlight, or where the soil becomes depleted of nutrients. In these cases, rather than the land magically producing a surplus product, there may be negative reproduction. In other words, even restoring the initial scale of production may not be possible, or may require, if they exist, stocks to be used to restore that initial condition.

Back To Part 21

Forward To Part 23

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 21

Engels notes that Duhring's statements, so far, have not taken the understanding of the Tableau forward one bit, “but now it is coming:

“On the other hand, however, now also”—this “however, now also” is a gem!—“the net product, enters into circulation as a natural object, and in this way becomes an element which should serve ... to maintain the class which is described as sterile. Here we can immediately (!) see the confusion arising from the fact that in one case it is the money value, and in the other the thing itself, which determines the course of thought”.” (p 312)

In fact, as Engels sets out, and as Marx describes, in Capital II, and Theories of Surplus Value, the Tableau describes the measurement of inputs and outputs, in the process of reproduction, both as physical quantities, “natural objects”, i.e. use-values, and as money values.

“Subsequently Quesnay even made his assistant, the Abbé Baudeau, include the natural objects in the Tableau itself, beside their money values.” (p 312)

Why? Because reproduction is about the reproduction of those use-values, the basis of continuing production, on at least the same scale, as the requirement to production on an expanded scale.

“After all this “input“, we at last get the “output”. Listen and marvel at these words:

“Nevertheless, the inconsistency“ (referring to the role assigned by Quesnay to the landlords) at once becomes clear as soon as we enquire what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course of economic circulation. Here the physiocrats and the economic Tableau could offer nothing but confusion and arbitrariness, culminating in mysticism”.” (p 312)

In other words, Duhring has to admit that he does not understand even the basis of Physiocratic theory, and the Tableau, and cannot see what happens to the “net product”, i.e. surplus product, appropriated as rent by the landlords. There is certainly error and some “mysticism” in Physiocratic theory, as set out by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, in that it describes this “surplus product”, which it equates with surplus value, to some innate property of the land. In Physiocratic theory, it is this property of the land to produce this surplus product, which is the basis of the owners of the land, the landlords, appropriating it as rent. But, its not true, as Duhring claims, to say that they or the Tableau does not describe what happens to it.

Engels quotes Duhring's statement,

““The lines which Quesnay draws to and fro” (in all there are just five of them!) “in his otherwise pretty simple” (!) “Tableau, and which are meant to represent the circulation of the net product”, make one wonder whether “these whimsical combinations of columns” may not be based on some mathematical fantasy; they are reminiscent of Quesnay’s attempts to square the circle” — and so forth.” (p 313)

Back To Part 20

Forward To Part 22

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, X – From The Critical History - Part 20

Engels quotes Duhring.

“What this “economic image of the relations of production and distribution means in Quesnay himself,” he says, can only be explained if one has “first carefully examined the leading ideas which are peculiar to him”. All the more so because hitherto these have only been set forth with “wavering indefiniteness”, and their “essential features cannot be recognised” even in Adam Smith.” (p 310)

But, as Engels sets out, Duhring, in the following five pages, fails to put forward any new perceptions in respect of the Tableau, and presents only confusion and vagueness “such as, for example, “the difference between input and output”. Though the latter, “it is true, is not to be found complete in Quesnay's ideas”, Herr Dühring on the other hand will give us a dazzling example of it as soon as he passes from his lengthy introductory “input” to his remarkably short-winded “output” , that is to say, to his elucidation of the Tableau itself.” (p 311)

Engels quotes Duhring's “input”.

“It seemed self-evident to him” (Quesnay) “that the revenue” (Herr Dühring had just spoken of the net product) “must be thought of and treated as a money value ... He tied his deliberations” (!) “immediately with the money values which he assumed as the results of the sales of all agricultural products when they first change hands. In this way” (!) “he operates with several milliards (that is, with money values) in the columns of his Tableau” .” (p 311)

Engels stresses Duhring's repeated statement that there are only money values set out in The Tableau. The Tableau does indeed contain money values, just as Marx, in his own schemas of reproduction, in his depiction of the circuit of industrial capital, and so on, also uses money values. But, these money values are a shorthand, they represent the money equivalent of the actual physical product that must be reproduced. It assumes no change in the value of money, i.e. no inflation of prices, and no change in social productivity, i.e. no change in the value the commodities to be physically reproduced.

But, it is precisely because the Tableau, as with Marx's schemas, is about the reproduction of the physical product, that its real basis is as an input-output table of these physical quantities. As Marx puts it in Capital III, Chapter 49.

“If the productiveness of labour remains the same, then this replacement in kind implies replacing the same value which the constant capital had in its old form. But should the productiveness of labour increase, so that the same material elements may be reproduced with less labour, then a smaller portion of the value of the product can completely replace the constant part in kind.” (p 849)

In other words, if productivity rises so that the product of 100 hours of labour is 1,000 kilos of corn (seed), rather than 800 kilos of corn (seed), and to produce this corn (seed), 100 kilos of seed must be planted, it is this physical amount of seed (100 kilos) that must be replaced, as Marx noted, in response to Ramsay, and it, now, constitutes only 10% of the product, not 12.5%, as before.

Engels quotes Duhring further.

“Had Quesnay considered things from a really natural standpoint, and had he rid himself not only of regard for the precious metals and the quantity of money, but also of regard for money values...But as it is he reckons solely with sums of value, and imagined” (!) “the net product in advance as a money value”.” (p 311)

In these arguments of Duhring can, also, be seen the roots of the same errors made by the proponents of the TSSI, and use of historic prices.

Duhring says,

“He” (Quesnay) “obtained it” (the net product) “by deducting the expenses and thinking, (!) principally” (not traditional but for that matter all the more superficial reporting) “of that value which would accrue to the landlord as rent”.” (p 312)

Set aside the reference to “rent” as opposed to profit, and essentially, this is the process used by Ramsay, as described by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, which results in the “illusion” of profit arising from changes in prices, leading to a release of capital. It is also the argument of the TSSI based on the use of historic prices.

Back To Part 19

Forward To Part 21