The reality, even in Marx's time, was that capitalism, itself, had wrought these changes in the productive and social relations, which, as Lenin points out, is why he could talk about the inevitability of Socialism, not as a prediction of future events, but as a description of existing reality. As Marx describes, even in his day, the functioning capitalists, the day to day professional managers, were themselves drawn from the working-class. It is not the bourgeoisie that ensures the operation of capital, but workers “from manager down to the last day-labourer”. It is workers who are the production line managers on factory floors; it is workers who supervise the operation of warehouses, and act as transport managers; it is workers who keep the books in the accountancy office, and who perform all the other administrative functions; it is workers who perform the tasks of Sales and Purchasing Managers, who form the development and research arms of the company and so on.
In the 1970's, when I worked for Royal Doulton, the Art Director was my uncle, an ordinary working-class bloke who had worked his way up from being an artist and designer, and who, till his dying day, lived in the same old semi-detached house. The Marketing Director was a child refugee from the Blitz, who lived in the same village as me, in a semi-detached house, whose kids went to the same school as me, and whose daughter, years later, lived in the same road as me, having married a truck driver. The production line manager, at the first potbank I worked at, was was my ASTMS Branch Secretary, who had been influenced, in his youth, by local CP'ers, and who lived in a council house on the huge and deprived estate in Bentilee. He also, later, became a Labour City Councillor.
Marx describes the difference between all of these workers that occupy these positions as managers and directors, who actually perform the role of functioning capitalist, organising and coordinating production, as distinct from the other directors and executives, who sit above them, who have no real day to day involvement in production, but whose role is merely to represent the interests of shareholders as against the interests of the company itself.
“It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property.”
(Capital III, Chapter 27)
Yet, the labour movement continues to operate as though it is presented with the private capitalism that existed in the 18th and early 19th century. At best, it appears to be seeking a transformation of the productive and social relations that, in fact, Marx has described as having already occurred. Indeed, Engels describes the further unfolding of that reality, in his Supplement, and in his Critique of the Erfurt Programme. Kautsky, in The Road To Power, made a similar point. But, the labour movement, and those within it that profess to be Marxists, obsess over the distributional and industrial struggle. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels emphasise that the determining issue is the property question. But, the property question, in terms of ownership, has already been resolved by the development of socialised capital. It is only the question of control over that property that needs to be addressed. Yet, instead, the labour movement addresses the property question only in terms of replacing one form of socialised capital – the corporation – with another form of socialised capital – the nationalised industry. Yet, as Kautsky described, if anything, the latter is more onerous and problematic for workers than the former. The state capitalist has far more power, as against workers, than does a private capitalist, or, here, shareholders representing private money lending capitalists.
“If the modern state nationalizes certain industries, it does not do so for the purpose of restricting capitalist exploitation, but for the purpose of protecting the capitalist system and establishing it upon a firmer basis, or for the purpose of itself taking a hand in the exploitation of labour, increasing its own revenues, and thereby reducing the contributions for its own support which it would otherwise have to impose upon the capitalist class. As an exploiter of labour, the state is superior to any private capitalist. Besides the economic power of the capitalists, it can also bring to bear upon the exploited classes the political power which it already wields.
The state has never carried on the nationalizing of industries further than the interests of the ruling classes demanded, nor will it ever go further than that. So long as the property-holding classes are the ruling ones, the nationalization of industries and capitalist functions will never be carried so far as to injure the capitalists and landlords or to restrict their opportunities for exploiting the proletariat.”
(Kautsky – the Erfurt Programme)
And, he draws the conclusion from it that what the workers require is a political struggle so as to ensure that they can exercise the necessary democratic control over the socialised capital, which is already the property of the associated producers. Again, that is the point made in Value, Price and Profit.
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