On the other hand, some of the petty-bourgeois moral socialists were drawn in the other direction. They associated themselves with “democratic imperialism”, which is the global manifestation of bourgeois democracy in its mature form as social-democracy. As a transitional form, it is an expression of a heightened contradiction. As a transitional form, social-democracy rests upon socialised capital, which is a transitional form of property. Socialised capital is the negation of capital as private property. It represents what Marx, in Capital I, Chapter 32 calls “the expropriation of the expropriators.” The socialised capital is the collective property of the associated producers, i.e. it belongs to the firm itself. But, it is still capital, and must and does continue to act as capital, thereby producing profit. This profit, as with any other, divides into the revenues rent, interest, profit of enterprise and taxes.
But, in Capital III, and Theories of Surplus Value, Marx sets out that the amounts of these are themselves not at all arbitrary, but determined by observable laws. The foundation of these laws is the average rate of profit, which is itself objectively determined. The average rate of profit is the total surplus value produced in the year divided by the total advanced capital for one turnover period, i.e. s x n/C, where n is the number of turnovers during the year. If the rate of turnover rises then the average rate of profit rises. Having determined the average rate of profit, it is then possible to determine any capital obtaining surplus profit, and rent equals surplus profit. Rent exists wherever the surplus profit cannot be competed away due to frictions in the movement of capital and labour.
Because all capital now has the use value that it can produce the average profit, whether it produces surplus value or not, capital itself can be sold as a commodity, as the buyer seeks to obtain this use value. This means that those that own loanable money-capital can charge a price for it. That price is the rate of interest. Sellers of capital will not give it away for free, and buyers of capital will not pay a higher rate of interest than the average rate of profit they can obtain from its use. So, although capital has no value – its not produced by labour – which can act as the basis of the locus around which its price revolves, i.e. there is no natural rate of interest, the price of capital is bounded by these constraints of zero and the average rate of profit. The actual rate of interest is then determined by the struggle between these two types of capitalists, the lenders of money-capital on the one hand, and the borrowers of money-capital on the other, i.e. the industrial capitalists.
Taxes as properly defined are determined by the cost of administration of the state, and that cost is determined by the prices of the commodities the state must buy for that administration, including the price of labour-power, wages. Many things paid for by “taxes” not to do with such administration, for example, to pay for the NHS, are not truly taxes, but simply a form of price for the provision of these commodities, they come out of the fund for society's variable-capital not out of surplus value. The capitalist class will always seek to minimise that cost and taxes, so as to maximise its revenue as profit.
What remains is the profit of enterprise. If the owner of the business is a private capitalist, this profit of enterprise represents a form of wages, a return for entrepreneurship, but, in a socialised capital, objectively, the owners of the business are the “associated producers”, and they are simply paid wages. That is true of the “functioning capitalists”, or day to day managers, who undertake all the social functions of the capitalist in organising production. However, in reality, this clear division only exists in one form of socialised capital, that of the worker-owned cooperative. Here, the workers and managers are paid wages, any landlord is paid a market rent, the state is paid the tax due, and any money borrowed results in a market rate of interest being paid. The profit of enterprise then remaining can be used to repay money-capital borrowed, to accumulate additional capital, or saved for future eventualities.
The same should be true of other forms of socialised capital, but, in practice, it isn't. A share certificate is just a legal document, a debt instrument, showing that the owner has loaned money to the company, or has bought this debt instrument from someone who has done so. Having loaned money to the company the shareholder normally expects to receive interest on that loan. The interest takes the form of dividends. So, on the basis of the normal laws of capital, and of commodity exchange, these shareholders should get the market rate of interest – adjusted for risk. That should be their only relation to the actual capital.
But, in practice, company law has been created so that these shareholders, rather than the associated producers, who collectively own the capital, exercise control. Social-democracy is the transitional form of state that exists and reflects this contradictory reality. On the one hand, the objective laws of capital dictate that it is the real capital, the socialised productive-capital, and its requirements that dominate. Those requirements include that the amount paid out as dividends/interest be minimised so that the profit of enterprise and potential for capital accumulation is maximised. It is the associated producers, i.e. the workers and managers that are the personification of this capital, and its interests. But, the actual control is in the hands of shareholders and their representatives, and these interests are antagonistic to those of the real capital.
This is why social-democracy itself is founded on a contradiction. On the one hand, progressive social democracy, representing the interests of the socialised capital itself, and on the other, conservative social democracy, representing the interests of fictitious capital, of share and and bondholders.
In either case, the petty-bourgeois socialists ally themselves with these forms of capital, and thereby to neoliberalism/conservative social democracy. They promote the kinds of bourgeois reforms that pose no threat to capital, but only facilitates the consolidation and development of those forms of it, as against the interests of small capital. And, on an international scale, they ally with the same sections of capital in support of liberal interventionism.
The Marxist rejects both of these alternatives in favour of the independence of the working-class and the building of workers' self activity and self-government. We reject the idea that the form of socialised capital as the corporation should be replaced simply by a different form of socialised capital in the nationalised industry. Rather, we demand that the socialised capital, as the collective property of the associated producers, should be under their democratic control. However, like Marx in the Inaugural Address, and like Trotsky, we recognise that such democratic control is not going to be simply granted by the ruling class, short of a political revolution. The demand for such control amounts to a demand for such a political revolution, it is something that can only be fought for by the whole class, as part of a political struggle for a Workers Government. We reject “anti-imperialist” alliances with reactionary nationalist regimes and movements, as well as opposing liberal intervention by “democratic imperialism”, in favour of international workers solidarity, and the building of communist parties, whose primary function, in each country, is to overthrow the rule of its own ruling-class.
No comments:
Post a Comment