Marxism, Zionism and the National Question
The Economic Basis of The State (1/2)
Capitalist production first arises in the 15th century. It arises first in the towns, for the reasons Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value. For capitalist production to be viable, it must be able to compete with, and undercut, the existing handicraft production. To do that, it must be able to produce on a larger scale than is undertaken by handicraft producers. That larger scale production enables a capitalist producer to employ wage labour, and, thereby, to enjoy the benefits of the division of labour, as well as appropriating the full amount of surplus value produced by the labourer. This is different to the surplus value appropriated by the antediluvian forms of capital – commercial capital and usurer's capital – which have existed, more or less, for as long as commodity production and exchange itself, going back 10,000 years. At a certain point, it means the capitalist producer can also employ machinery, which requires not only a market of sufficient size, but also the necessary development of technology. Capitalist production could not take hold until all these conditions were met.
The older forms of capital appropriated surplus value, as commercial profit and interest, on the basis of unequal exchange. The merchant bought commodities from producers below their value, on the basis of saving the producer the costs of circulation. In doing so, they appropriate a part of the surplus value created by the handicraft producer. The usurer obtains interest, by lending to the handicraft producer who finds themselves, for whatever reason, in need of money. The interest is a deduction from the surplus value produced by the handicraft producer. As Marx says, these forms of capital, where they are dominant, are inimical to the development of capitalism itself. Their limits are not determined by the average industrial rate of profit, as is the case under capitalism. The deductions they make from the surplus value, produced by the handicraft producer, do not go to enhance the accumulation of capital, but act to reduce the funds available for it. Indeed, in the first instances of capitalist production, in the Mediterranean city states, these forms of capital killed it at birth, by draining not just the surplus value of the producers, but even eating into a part of what constituted the fund required for their own reproduction. As Marx says, these forms of capital, in previous modes of production, only act to turn those handicraft producers that fall victim to them into slaves and serfs, not into wage labourers.
But, for production to be undertaken on this larger scale, markets of a minimum size are first required. These larger markets cannot first arise for agricultural commodities for the simple reason that the peasant producers of them are direct producers, who produce the food they require for their own consumption, and so have no need to go to the market to satisfy their needs. To the extent they do produce commodities, it is only in order to exchange them for other commodities required for their own consumption, C – M - C. There is no basis for direct agricultural producing peasants to become wage labourers, because they can produce their own means of consumption, and the market for these products is not large enough to provide the grounds for large scale production, by capital, required to undercut that direct and independent production. The landlords also acquire their own agricultural needs, directly, from the production of the peasants and serfs on their land. The only things that either peasants or landlords need to acquire from the market are industrial products, i.e. the products of the towns, or else imported, more exotic products, brought there by the merchants. When the towns grow, the number of industrial producers in those towns, who also need to satisfy their needs from the market, also expands. When merchants begin to bring back exotic products from distant lands, these are sold in these town markets, leading landlords to need Money Rents in place of Labour Rent, or Rent in Kind, so as to buy these commodities. The market for industrial products, thereby, reaches a size at which production on a larger scale becomes possible, and so capitalist production becomes possible.
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