Marx and Engels envisaged that the concentration and centralisation of capital would be such that the capitalist state would find itself compelled to intervene to create large state capitals. Of course, they saw nothing socialist in such nationalisation, other than in the form, as Marx describes in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, and Engels in The Critique of the Erfurt Programme, where he sets out their opposition to all “state socialism”.
“These points demand that the following should be taken over by the state: (1) the bar, (2) medical services, (3) pharmaceutics, dentistry, midwifery, nursing, etc., etc., and later the demand is advanced that workers’ insurance become a state concern. Can all this be entrusted to Mr. von Caprivi? And is it compatible with the rejection of all state socialism, as stated above?”
They did see, however, that all of this monopoly, planning, regulation and state ownership would create the fundamental property forms required for Socialism, and that the continued control over that property by the capitalist state and shareholders, along with the siphoning off of revenues, in the form of interest/dividends by a ruling class which no longer had any role in production, and was reduced to being mere 'coupon clippers' would be untenable. It would already be the case that the day to day management of businesses was undertaken by a new middle class of professional managers, technicians, and administrators drawn itself from the working-class, so that the capitalists would have become redundant as a class, just as the landlords had done after the establishment of the capitalist farmer.
Because the ownership of capital is mistakenly attributed to shareholders, rather than workers, the attitude towards it is correspondingly mistaken and reactionary. Instead of seeking to facilitate the development of such large-scale capital, measures are proposed to hold it back. Were anyone to propose taxing workers more heavily, socialists would oppose it, and yet proposals to increase Corporation Tax are raised. Increased Corporation Tax means an increase in taxes on socialised capital, i.e. the collective property of workers. If taxes were a means of any progressive development – which Marx shows they aren't – then the rational measure would not be an increase in Corporation Tax, but an increase in taxes on dividends and other forms of unearned income, capital gains and so on. But, increased taxes are not a means of effecting progressive change. They simply increase the revenues of the capitalist state, enabling it to spend more in the interests of the ruling class, in more police to control workers' strikes, more weapons and troops to fight wars and so on.
If progressive change is desired, its not increased taxes that are needed but a change in company law to simply give workers their rightful control over their collective property, and to remove the illegitimate control exercised over it by shareholders. In that way, not only would the socialised capital be more rationally developed, but the coupon clippers would only be able to obtain a market rate of interest, increasingly leading to their liquidation as a class, as the need to borrow from them disappeared. Its on this basis that the genuine Marxist differs from the petty-bourgeois social-democrat and reformist socialist, including those that call themselves Marxists. The same was true in relation to the Russian Marxists, as against those Narodniks and Legal Marxists, who claimed adherence to the ideas of Marx and Engels.
“Narodism posed the question of capitalism in Russia, but answered it in the sense that capitalism is reactionary, and therefore could not wholly accept the heritage of the enlighteners: the Narodniks always warred against people who in general strove to Europeanise Russia from the standpoint of a “single civilisation”; warred against them not only because they, the Narodniks, could not confine themselves to these people’s ideals (such a war would have been just), but because they did not want to go so far in the development of this, i.e., capitalist, civilisation. The ‘disciples” answer the question of capitalism in Russia in the sense that it is progressive, and they therefore not only can, but must, accept the heritage of the enlighteners in its entirety, supplementing it with an analysis of the contradictions of capitalism from the standpoint of the property-less producers.” (p 525-6)
So, rather than heavier taxes on corporations, Marxists favour enabling those corporations to develop more freely and rapidly, but we argue for their workers to control them, not shareholders, who neither own them nor have their long-term interest at heart. The shareholder is only interested in short-term benefits, including inflated share prices, providing them with speculative capital gains, with using profits to inflate share prices rather than to invest in additional productive capacity, and so on. Rather than arguing for Brexit/Lexit, the Marxist argues for the greatest possible removal of national borders, and creation of larger multinational states, but we seek to make them Workers' States.
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