Objecting to the inevitable subordination of weaker nations to more powerful nations is as utopian and reactionary as objecting to the destruction of the small commodity producers by the capitalist producers, or the small, private capitalist producers by the huge socialised capitals and monopolies. The socialist perspective does not derive from such a moral objection to such progressive development, no matter how brutal or obnoxious, nor from an attempt to turn them back, but from a determination to push forward the objectively progressive nature of those developments to their conclusion.
So, we do not seek to turn back the monopolies that arise from capitalist competition, but to have monopolies under the control of their workers, and for these monopolies to plan and regulate their collective activities, so as to plan and regulate all social production. We do not seek to turn back the creation of large multinational markets, empires and states, but to remove any remaining national privileges, frictions and limitations within them, by having the workers within such structures assert their unity, and common interest as workers, rather than them being divided on the basis of “nation” or “nationality”. As Lenin put it, we are not in favour of national self-determination, which divides workers by borders, but of workers self-determination, uniting them across borders, and seeking to dismantle those borders. As Trotsky puts it,
“From the standpoint of historical development as well as from the point of view of the tasks of the Social Democracy, the tendency of modern economy is fundamental, and it must be guaranteed the fullest opportunity of executing its truly liberationist historical mission: to construct the united world economy, independent of national frames, state and tariff barriers, subject only to the peculiarities of the soil and natural resources, to climate and the requirements of division of labour. Poles, Alsatians, Dalmatians. Belgians, Serbians and other small weak European nations not yet annexed, may be reinstated or set up for the first time in the national configurations towards which they gravitate, and, above all, will be able to remain within these configurations and freely develop their cultural existence only to the extent to which as national groupings they will cease to be economic groupings, will not be bound by state borders, will not be separated from or opposed to one another, economically. In other words, in order that Poles, Serbians, Romanians and others will be able actually to form untrammelled national unifications, it is necessary that the state boundaries now splitting them up into parts be cancelled, that the framework of the state be enlarged as an economic but not as a national organization, until it envelops the whole of capitalist Europe, which is now cut asunder by tariffs and borders and torn by war. We state unification of Europe is clearly a prerequisite of self-determination of great and small nations of Europe. A national-cultural existence, free of national economic antagonisms and based on real self-determination, is possible only under the roof of a democratically united Europe freed from state and tariff barriers.”
(ibid)
The Prometheus that Proudhon had resuscitated, Marx says, is nothing but this class-riven society, whose relations are not those between individual commodity producers, but between antagonistic classes, worker and capitalist, farmer and landlord etc.
“Wipe out these relations and you annihilate all society, and your Prometheus is nothing but a ghost without arms or legs; that is, without automatic workshops, without division of labour – in a word, without everything that you gave him to start with in order to make him obtain this surplus left by labour.” (p 93)
Proudhon proclaimed the rise in social wealth, but, Marx asks,
“What is, exactly, collective wealth, public fortune? It is the wealth of the bourgeoisie – not that of each bourgeois in particular. Well, the economists have done nothing but show how, in the existing relations of production, the wealth of the bourgeoisie has grown and must grow still further. As for the working classes, it still remains a very debatable question whether their condition has improved as a result of the increase in so-called public wealth.” (p 94)
Marx notes the comments of economists in relation to the English textile workers, and says,
“If economists, in support of their optimism, cite the example of the English workers employed in the cotton industry, they see the condition of the latter only in the rare moments of trade prosperity. These moments of prosperity are to the periods of crisis and stagnation in the “true proportion” of 3 to 10. But perhaps also, in speaking of improvement, the economists were thinking of the millions of workers who had to perish in the East Indies so as to procure for the million and a half workers employed in England in the same industry three years' prosperity out of ten.” (p 94)
As Engels noted, earlier, this was written at a time before they had properly considered wages, and broken from the concepts of subsistence wages. In 1846, a new long wave upswing had only just commenced, in 1843, prior to which had been seen the period of stagnation.. Even as employment rose, capital could still resort to large labour reserves in the countryside. But, as Marx and Engels were to set out, as they further analysed wages, this upward trajectory does result in a more or less secular rise in workers' living standards, but not in proportion to the rise in social productivity, so that the rate of surplus value rises, whether wages are rising or not. Nominal and real wages rise, but relative wages fall.
It is, then, simply a question that, at certain times wages rise faster, as labour supplies run down, during booms, and slower, or even fall, at others, when a relative surplus population is created. What is more, these latter periods arise when capital has responded to squeezed profits from rising relative wages, by engaging in technological revolutions to replace labour. And, in fact, part of this technological revolution is also to reduce the value of commodities required to reduce the value of labour-power, by reducing the value of commodities required for its reproduction. The logic of Proudhon's theory is that the workers would, indeed, be immiserated by this process, as with The Iron Law of Wages, put forward by the Lassalleans.
“If there were anything to be condemned, it would surely be the system of M. Proudhon, who would reduce the worker, as we have shown, to the minimum wage, in spite of the increase of wealth. It is only by reducing the worker to the minimum wage that he would be able to apply the true proportion of values, of “value constituted” by labour time. It is because wages, as a result of competition, oscillate now above, now below, the price of food necessary for the sustenance of the worker, that he can participate to a certain extent in the development of collective wealth, and can also perish from want. This is the whole theory of the economists who have no illusions on the subject.” (p 95)
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