Large-scale, socialised capital, and the social-democratic state, resolves this contradiction by a typical combination of both capitalist and socialist means. Firstly, it introduces large-scale planning of production, at the enterprise and, in the case of cartels and trusts, industry level, but, unlike the administrative plans of Stalinism, these plans are derived on the basis of extensive consumer research, and perpetual, real-time analysis of consumer behaviour. The introduction of EPOS systems, from the mid 1970's, but most notably from the mid 1980's, greatly facilitated that, and, with loyalty cards, plus all of the consumer data provided by credit and debit card companies, now compounded by all of the data provided by tech companies, large-scale capital has a comprehensive knowledge of what consumers want, in what quantity, at what price, and so what to produce, and in what quantity.
As Simon Clarke put it, thirty years ago.
“Indeed it would be fair to say that the sphere of planning in capitalism is much more extensive than it is in the command economies of the soviet bloc. The scope and scale of planning in giant corporations like Ford, Toyota, GEC or ICI dwarfs that of most, if not all, of the Soviet Ministries. The extent of co-ordination through cartels, trade associations, national governments and international organisations makes Gosplan look like an amateur in the planning game. The scale of the information flows which underpin the stock control and ordering of a single Western retail chain are probably greater than those which support the entire Soviet planning system.”
(Capital and Class, Winter 1990)
But, not even the most comprehensive knowledge and planning can predict the future, as weather forecasts continue to demonstrate, daily. For one thing, in terms of the number of firms, and total production, it is not the large-scale industrial capital that predominates, but small scale private capital, although it is largely subordinated to the former, and told what to produce, in what quantity, and at what price, in so far as it supplies that large industrial capital.
“The mass of small dispersed capitals is thereby driven along the adventurous road of speculation, credit frauds, stock swindles, and crises. The so-called plethora of capital always applies essentially to a plethora of the capital for which the fall in the rate of profit is not compensated through the mass of profit — this is always true of newly developing fresh offshoots of capital — or to a plethora which places capitals incapable of action on their own at the disposal of the managers of large enterprises in the form of credit. This plethora of capital arises from the same causes as those which call forth relative over-population, and is, therefore, a phenomenon supplementing the latter, although they stand at opposite poles — unemployed capital at one pole, and unemployed worker population at the other.”
(Capital III, Chapter 15)
Overproduction is endemic to that legacy of small private capital, and so, for the reasons set out above, can spread into the rest of the economy. Moreover, whilst large-scale industrial capital operates in the context of a single global economy, it does not do so in the context of a single global market. That is one reason that capital is forced to continuously try to create larger single markets, like the EU, and to establish large states to regulate and plan them. But, that plethora of small private capitals, the petty-bourgeoisie, continues to exert a political influence, via its political parties like the Tories in Britain and Republicans in the US, and via them on the policies of states, especially in conditions where large nation state bureaucracies have a vested interest in preserving and extending their own bureaucratic empires. That is why, even in the EU, progress towards a state, even a federal state, has been painfully slow, and why, in Britain, a sizeable petty-bourgeoisie was able to push through Brexit.
Consequently, however well informed these large socialised capitals are, they are still subject to fluctuations in demand for their commodities, arising from the varying fortunes of this vast plethora of small private capital, and its employees. Consequently, they must, sometimes, reduce prices, though they use central banks to print money tokens to try to prevent falls in the general price level. But, they also act to influence flagging demand by other means, such as the use of advertising, and sophisticated psychological techniques.
No comments:
Post a Comment