Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 2. The Division of Labour and Machinery - Part 10 of 10

Marx describes the process set out above by which the expansion of the market drives the expansion of production, via the workshop, and where the manual labour employed is insufficient, capital turns to machines. But, the introduction of machines, thereby, does not at all signify the kind of philanthropy that Proudhon claims.

“The automatic workshop opened its career with acts which were anything but philanthropic. Children were kept at work at the whip’s end; they were made an object of traffic and contracts were undertaken with the orphanages. All the laws on the apprenticeship of workers were repealed, because, to use M. Proudhon’s phraseology, there was no further need for synthetic workers. Finally, from 1825 onwards, almost all the new inventions were the result of collisions between the worker and the employer who sought at all costs to depreciate the worker’s specialized ability. After each new strike of any importance, there appeared a new machine. So little indeed did the worker see in the application of machinery a sort of rehabilitation, restoration – as M. Proudhon would say – that in the 18th century he stood out for a very long time against the incipient domination of automation.” (p 130)

Marx quotes Ure's account of Arkwright's introduction of spinning machines, the main problem of which was not the creation of a self-acting mechanism, but, “in training human beings to renounce their desultory habits of work, and to identify themselves with the unvarying regularity of the complex automaton. But to devise and administer a successful code of factory discipline, suited to the necessities of factory diligence” (p 130)

The division of labour within the factory makes possible the introduction of machines. Machines release capital and labour, also releasing revenue, as Marx explains in Theories of Surplus Value. In so doing, they make possible the application of capital and labour in new types of production, and provides the revenues for their consumption. It, thereby, creates an expansion of the social division of labour. Marx describes the way this process had led to a complete transformation, since the time of Adam Smith, in both the division of labour, and the transition to machine production. He quotes extensively from the work of Ure to that effect.

The new social division of labour creates narrow specialisation, and so what Marx calls “craft idiocy”. That is the worker becomes a blinkered specialist in this one field at the expense of other activity. Marx quotes Lemontey,

““We are struck with admiration,” says Lemontey, “when we see among the Ancients the same person distinguishing himself to a high degree as philosopher, poet, orator, historian, priest, administrator, general of an army. Our souls are appalled at the sight of so vast a domain. Each one of us plants his hedge and shuts himself up in his enclosure. I do not know whether by this parcellation the field is enlarged, but I do know that man is belittled.”” (p 132)

But, machine production destroys that specialisation, and along with it craft idiocy. The worker becomes a seller of homogeneous factory labour-power that can be employed as easily in producing cloth as shoes, or automobiles.

“M. Proudhon, not having understood even this one revolutionary side of the automatic workshop, takes a step backward and proposes to the worker that he make not only the 12th part of a pin, but successively all 12 parts of it. The worker would thus arrive at the knowledge and the consciousness of the pin. This is M. Proudhon’s synthetic labour. Nobody will contest that to make a movement forward and another movement backward is to make a synthetic movement.” (p 133)

In fact, post-Fordist production, based on modular production and work groups, does act to raise productivity by allowing each work group to operate semi-autonomously, and its members to rotate tasks to alleviate boredom. But, the tasks are still based on this same machine production, and homogeneous factory labour, and the work groups themselves have, increasingly, been replaced by robots.

“To sum up, M. Proudhon has not gone further than the petty-bourgeois ideal. And to realize this ideal, he can think of nothing better than to take us back to the journeyman or, at most, to the master craftsman of the Middle Ages. It is enough, he says somewhere in his book, to have created a masterpiece once in one’s life, to have felt oneself just once to be a man. Is not this, in form as in content, the masterpiece demanded by the trade guild of the Middle Ages?” (p 133)

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The Canton Insurrection, Adventurism As A Product of Opportunism - Part 2 of 2

The opposition had, correctly, warned of the error in subordinating the communists to the KMT, and, then, to the Left KMT, as well as warning of the danger of adventurism, represented by the Canton uprising.

“The very same opportunist line which, by the policy of capitulation to the bourgeoisie, already brought the revolution, at its first two phases, the heaviest defeats, “grew over” in the third phase, into a policy of adventurous attacks upon the bourgeoisie, and made the defeat final.” (p 142-3)

The fact of making mistakes is not where the problem lies, because mistakes are inevitable, in trying to orientate to real events. Even without mistakes, defeats occur. Events can also force the revolutionaries to pursue a course they would not ideally have chosen. Marx argued against the Paris workers rising in revolt in 1871, but, when they did, threw his weight behind them. In the July Days of 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were similarly forced to back actions by the workers they rightly saw as premature. The Bolsheviks would not have chosen to engage in “War Communism”, but had to to deal with the needs of fighting the Civil War.

“If the leadership had not been in such a hurry yesterday to skip over the defeats which it had brought about, it would have begun by explaining to the Communist Party of China that victory is not gained at one blow, that on the road to insurrection there is still a period of intense, constant and fierce struggles for political influence on the workers and peasants.” (p 143)

The later strategy of Mao Zedong, of a rural based guerrilla war, rather than a proletarian revolution, could also be seen to have its origins in this earlier adventurism. Trotsky refers to the reports in Pravda, of the armies of Ho Lung and Ye Ting, which were described as revolutionary armies, but these armies, comprised mainly of peasants, were marching through the countryside, not bringing about revolution in the urban areas. It is the kind of guerrilla war seen later in other parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Yet, Pravda gave no account of the program that these supposed revolutionary armies were marching under.

“Without first organizing the Communist Party against the Guomindang in its entirety, without agitation among the masses for soviets and a soviet government, without an independent mobilization of the masses under the slogan of the agrarian revolution and national emancipation, without the creation, extension and strengthening of the local soviets of workers’, soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies, the uprising of Ho Lung and Ye Ting, even leaving aside their opportunist policy, could not fail to be an isolated adventure, a pseudo-Communist Makhno feat; it could not but clash against its own isolation, and it has clashed.” (p 143-4)

Only in exceptional cases have these strategies succeeded in their own terms. Never have they succeeded in bringing about a proletarian revolution. Whenever they have succeeded in their own terms, they have brought about some form of Bonapartist regime, and repression of the workers and peasants, often worse than existed before.  Providing "Left" cover for these reactionary, petty-bourgeois movements was warned against by Lenin in The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, and the consequence of doing so, given the inevitably reactionary regimes they created, has defamed and set back the cause of socialism for the last century.

“The February resolution of the ECCI combats certain putschistic tendencies in the Communist Party of China, that is, the tendencies towards armed skirmishes. It does not say, however, that these tendencies are a reaction to the entire opportunist policy of 1925-27, and an unavoidable consequence of the purely military orders, handed down from above, to “change step” without appraising all that had been done, without an open revaluation of the basis of the tactics, without a clear prospect. Ho Lung’s march and the Canton insurrection were (and under such circumstances, had to be) outbursts of putschism.” (p 144)

In Europe, and North America, Stalinism's Popular Front strategy aligned the CP's with the reformists and bourgeoisie apart from the brief interlude of the Third Period madness. In the rest of the world, it aligned them with and subordinated them to the peasant and petty-bourgeois parties. In the period after WWII, it followed its rational course, via Eurocommunism, of turning the CP's into conservative, social-democratic parties pure and simple. The national-socialist rump of those parties, left behind, became the basis of petty-bourgeois reactionary nationalism, that easily welded to right-wing nationalism and populism in the red-brown front. Elsewhere, in the world, it turned them into these peasant based guerrilla armies.

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Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 2. The Division of Labour and Machinery - Part 9 of 10

It was concentration and centralisation of means of production which enables a technical division of labour, which makes possible machine production. Marx compares agriculture in Britain and France. In the former, land ownership is concentrated. That enables agricultural labour to be based on a division of labour, and, in turn, the introduction of machinery. In France, land ownership remained diffuse, with smaller scale production, no division of labour or use of machinery.

“For M. Proudhon the concentration of the instruments of labour is the negation of the division of labour. In reality, we find again the reverse. As the concentration of instruments develops, the division develops also, and vice versa. This is why every big mechanical invention is followed by a greater division of labour, and each increase in the division of labour gives rise in turn to new mechanical inventions.” (p 129)

I have also set out why this is based on Marx's analysis of the long wave cycle and Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall. The expansion of markets gave rise to the potential for large-scale capitalist production, in the towns. At first, as described above, the demand for labour is met by the influx from rural areas. But, this limited supply enabled workers to demand high wages, and only work several days per week. The introduction of a technical division of labour raises productivity, but, to satisfy the demands of capital for labour, and so reduce these wages, capital must introduce labour-saving machines.

The machines have several effects. They raise productivity much higher, and so reduce the demand for labour, weakening the position of workers, and reducing wages. They cheapen output, expanding the market. For spinning machines, they cause a glut of yarn, throwing many spinners out of business. They cause an increased demand for cotton, wool, flax etc., leading to increased production in those areas, stimulating further development of division of labour and machines. As capital and labour is released that stimulates a further social division of labour, as new types of commodity are produced.

“The invention of machinery brought about the separation of manufacturing industry from agricultural industry. The weaver and the spinner, united but lately in a single family, were separated by the machine. Thanks to the machine, the spinner can live in England while the weaver resides in the East Indies. Before the invention of machinery, the industry of a country was carried on chiefly with raw materials that were the products of its own soil; in England – wool, in Germany – flax, in France – silks and flax, in the East Indies and the Levant – cottons, etc. Thanks to the application of machinery and of steam, the division of labour was about to assume such dimensions that large-scale industry, detached from the national soil, depends entirely on the world market, on international exchange, on an international division of labour. In short – the machine has so great an influence on the division of labour, that when, in the manufacture of some object, a means has been found to produce parts of it mechanically, the manufacture splits up immediately into two works independent of each other.” (p 129)

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Lessons of The Chinese Revolution, The Canton Insurrection, Adventurism As A Product of Opportunism - Part 1 of 2

In 1923, in Germany, the opportunist line led to the revolutionary opportunities being missed, and was followed by adventurist calls for General Strikes, and so on, as though they could be conjured from thin air by administrative appeals. The same thing happened in China. On a general level, the opportunism of the Popular Front strategy gave way to the idiocy of Third Period sectarianism, between 1928-34.

The resolution of the February Plenum of the ECCI, spoke of the revolutionary wave taking place under the leadership and slogans of the Communist Party. It goes on to note the heavy defeats and massacre of the revolutionary cadres. But, in fact, as Trotsky notes, during the period of revolutionary upsurge, the ECCI had been claiming that it was the KMT that was leading it, and was the basis of arguing the need for the communists to subordinate themselves to it. It was argued that it even removed the need for soviets. A similar opportunist argument is given by social-imperialists, in relation to Ukraine, for example, in the statement of the AWL's Jim Denham that imperialism and the capitalist state defends workers interests “for its own reasons”.

It was that subordination, and failure to organise soviets, that brought about the defeats and massacres. The Stalinists, in their resolution, acknowledging those defeats, then wiped from history the leading role of the KMT, and their subordination to it, leaving the defeat and disasters as some kind of unavoidable event.

“Formerly we were told that there were no defeats either in Shanghai or in Wuhan, there were merely transitions of the revolution “into a higher phase”. That is what we were taught. Now the sum total of these transitions is suddenly declared to be “heavy defeats for the workers and peasants”. However, in order to mask to some extent this unprecedented political bankruptcy of perspective and judgement, the concluding paragraph of the resolution says:

The ECCI makes it the duty of all sections of the Comintern to fight against the Social-Democratic and Trotskyist slander to the effect that the Chinese revolution has been liquidated [?].” (p 140-41)

This, again, was nonsensical. The same resolution had previously described the Trotskyist position as saying that the revolution was permanent. So, how, then, could the Trotskyist position be that it was liquidated? If by liquidated is meant that it had suffered severe defeats, which set back the workers and revolutionary elements for an indeterminate period, then how is that different from what the resolution itself admitted, when it spoke of such defeats, and so, how could this be slander?

If by liquidation is meant that the possibility of revolution itself no longer existed that would require that, either, China itself ceased to exist, or that the Chinese bourgeoisie became capable of transforming the country by non-revolutionary means. There was no reason to assume the former, and the opposition did not support the latter, though that is what the Stalinists sought to imply.

This was a repeat of what had happened in Germany, in 1923, where the Stalinists had accused the Opposition of being liquidationists, for having pointed out that the Stalinists had let the revolutionary moment slip by.

“It is true that the need of finding “liquidators” is far more acute than it was four years ago; for at the present time, it is too obvious that if anybody did “liquidate” the second Chinese revolution, it was the authors of the course towards the Guomindang.” (p 142)

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Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 2. The Division of Labour and Machinery - Part 8 of 10

In other words,, as previously described, it was not the division of labour that brings this about. First, the market, in the towns, expands; secondly, merchants have larger money profits from increased activity and inflation; thirdly, they can use these money profits to employ available labour. As Marx describes, in Capital, and Lenin sets out in his polemics against the Narodniks, under those conditions, its not even the case, nor necessary, that the capitalist buys labour-power, rather than the product of labour.

Suppose an independent hand-loom weaver produces a metre of cloth in 10 hours labour. Say, 10 hours labour is equal to £1 of new value. Now, because of economies of scale, in the workshop, a hand-loom weaver works for the same 10 hours, and is paid £1 for this new value created, but produces 1.1 metres of cloth. If the market value of cloth is determined by the former, then the capitalist, in selling 1.1 metres of cloth, will recover £1.10, having only paid £1 for the value added by labour, and that is before considering any economies they make in buying material in bulk and so on. The initial industrial workers, therefore, were able to choose to work for capitalists for only part of the week, to obtain money to make payments. The rest of the week, they were able to continue to work on their own account. Indeed, as Marx sets out, in Capital, bourgeois ideologists, at the time, bemoaned this freedom of the labourer to limit the hours worked.

Initially, therefore, what is involved is this bringing together of handicraft producers under one roof, and under the control of one capitalist, who is able to organise production on a larger scale to meet the needs of larger markets, and to obtain economies of scale.

“The utility of a workshop consisted much less in the division of labour as such than in the circumstances that work was done on a much larger scale, that many unnecessary expenses were saved, etc. At the end of the 16th and at the beginning of the 17th century, Dutch manufacture scarcely knew any division of labour.” (p 127-8)

In fact, as against a social division of labour, its impossible to have a significant technical division of labour, outside the workshop, because it implies a large enough scale of production to have several workers, each specialising in one aspect of production, and coordinating their production with others in the workshop.

“There is not one single example, whether in the 16th or in the 17th century, of the different branches of one and the same craft being exploited separately to such an extent that it would have sufficed to assemble them all in one place so as to obtain a complete, ready-made workshop. But once the men and the instruments had been brought together, the division of labour, such as it had existed in the form of the guilds, was reproduced, necessarily reflected inside the workshop.” (p 128)

And, that was just the beginning. Once in the workshop, the individual tasks can be analysed and broken down into separate operations, as with Adam Smith's pin. Each worker becomes a detail worker, specialising in that specific task. Proudhon sees the machine as the antidote to this, for the worker, because the machine replicates all these separate tasks into one continuous process, again, now producing the end product. But, what Proudhon fails to see is that it is the machine that now brings together all these individual tasks, not the worker. The worker, who now has become simply a wage-worker, a seller of homogeneous, machine-minding, factory labour, is not the one who performs all these tasks of producing a pin, but the machine. The worker is not the producer of pins as commodities that they can sell, in the way that independent commodity producers did; it is the machine, and the machine is the property of the capitalist, and only exists because of capitalist factory production.

“Machinery, properly so-called, dates from the end of the 18th century. Nothing is more absurd than to see in machinery the antithesis of the division of labour, the synthesis restoring unity to divided labour.

The machine is a unification of the instruments of labour, and by no means a combination of different operations for the worker himself.

“When, by the division of labour, each particular operation has been simplified to the use of a single instrument, the linking up of all these instruments, set in motion by a single engine, constitutes – a machine.”

(Babbage, Traite sur l’économie des machines [et des manufactures], Paris 1833 [p.230;cf. Eng.ed., p 71].)” (p 128)

Indeed, the development of machinery required the division of labour, to break down composite production into a series of discrete tasks, so that these simple tasks could be undertaken as a series of operations, by the machine.

“Simple tools; accumulation tools; composite tools; setting in motion of a composite tool by a single hand engine, by man; setting in motion of these instruments by natural forces, machines; system of machines having one motor; system of machines having one automatic motor – this is the progress of machinery.” (p 128)

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The Canton Insurrection, Democratic Dictatorship or a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat - Part 8 of 8

Trotsky says its impossible to say what might create the conditions for a resurgence of the revolutionary movement, which could come from internal sources, or some external event. In fact, it was the latter.

“It is not excluded that the first period of the coming third revolution may repeat, in a greatly abridged and modified form, the stages which have already been gone through, for example, by presenting some new parody of the “common national front”. But this first period will probably suffice to permit the Communist Party to put before the popular masses its “April theses”, that is, its program and tactics for the capture of power.” (p 139)

And, indeed, that was the case. World War II is often dated as 1939-45, just as WWI is dated as 1914-18. In fact, that only reflects the involvement of the main imperialist protagonists. The First World War can be dated back to, at least, the Balkan Wars, if not to earlier conflicts such as the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, and the Second World War started much earlier, as with the Second Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937. In reality, the material conditions for it, and dynamic towards war, date back further than that.

Illustrating, Trotsky's point about the idiocy of seeing WWII, as a war between “democratic imperialism”, and fascism, and the reality of military alliances comprising both fascist and “democratic” regimes, China was supported by an alliance comprising the US, UK, the USSR and Nazi Germany, prior to the latter forming an alliance with Japan, following the bombing of Pearl Harbour, and declaration of war on it by the US.

The war forced a second popular front between the CCP, and Kuomintang. The weakness of the CCP, having lost its proletarian base in the cities, was manifest in the fact that Japan was able to take control of the cities, but not the vast rural areas, further driving the CCP into the arms of the peasantry, and reliance on guerrilla warfare, rather than proletarian revolution. Japan, having had a rapid victory over Russian Tsarism in 1905, and, now, having swept across much of China, made the mistake of attacking Russia again. In 1939, Japan was heavily defeated at Khalkin Gol, in one of the first large tank battles of WWII. It was a major reason for Japanese militarists switching their attention to the attack on US interests in the Pacific.

The soviet military advance into Manchuria, and Mongolia, and seemingly unstoppable advance into Japan itself, is what brought about the Japanese total surrender to the US, as Japanese capital preferred a deal with US imperialism, and a continuation of capitalism, to a defeat at the hands of the USSR, and overthrow of its capitalist regime. But, similarly, this rapid soviet military advance, and the support given to the Chinese CP, is what enabled the latter to defeat the Kuomintang, and establish the People's Republic of China, in 1949. The name itself “People's”, reflects the petty-bourgeois, populist nature of the CCP, and of its “revolution”, and the nature of the Bonapartist regime established.

Rather than it leading to the workers seizing power, it resulted in a peasant army, led by Mao Zedong, seizing power, and establishing a Stalinoid, Bonapartist regime. As in Eastern Europe, as Trotsky had previously described, in relation to Poland, the liquidation of the old exploiting classes and the property forms upon which they rested – landed property and capital – meant that the workers became the ruling class, even though they did not directly hold political power in their own hands. Yet, the working-class, in China, represented a small minority of society, and the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie, suffered from all of the deficiencies of such heterogeneous classes previously identified by Marx. The Bonapartist regime of the CCP, therefore, presided over the creation of another deformed workers' state.

The path to this development was created by the Comintern. Its failed policies had led to the coup of Chiang Kai Shek, and the loss of the advanced workers, concentrated in the big towns and cities. But, even after those mistakes, it continued along the same path. Its draft programme said,

“The transition to the proletarian dictatorship is possible here [in China] only after a series of preparatory stages [?], only as a result of a whole period of the growing over [?] of the bourgeois-democratic revolution into the socialist revolution.” (p 139)

It was Menshevist “stagism” and tailism, not Marxism. It opened he door for Mao to build his party/military apparatus, not on the basis of the proletariat, whose revolution was, thereby, postponed to the indefinite future, but on the basis of the peasantry and guerrilla war, fought in rural areas.

“In other words, all the “stages” that have already been gone through are not taken into account. What has been left behind, the draft program still sees ahead. This is exactly what is meant by dragging behind the tail. It leaves gates wide open for new experiments in the spirit of the Guomindang course. Thus, the concealment of the old blunders inevitably prepares the road for new errors.

If we enter the new rise, which will develop at an incomparably more rapid rate than the last one, with the outlived plan of “democratic dictatorship”, there can be no doubt that the third revolution will be lost just as the second one.” (p 139-40)

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A Citizen Army?

Outgoing head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has called for a British “Citizen Army” to be created ready to fight against Russia, as the drive to World War III, continues apace, despite the bleating of social-imperialists that the Eastward drive of NATO, its encampments in Central Asia, direct military involvement in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and build up of forces in the Pacific, do not suggest any such development. Former Tory Defence Minister, Tobias Elwood, was more honest than them, when he stated openly “There's a 1939 feel to the world right now”. The statement by General Sanders, not to be confused with the better known Colonel Sanders, follows the statement from the top soldier, Paul Carney, who said last year, that British service families should prepare for their kids to fight and die in Ukraine. In fact, we know from the leaked US Defence Department papers that British soldiers already are actively engaged in Ukraine.

Whether the social-imperialists like it or not, the world is heading towards World War III, as an inter-imperialist global conflict, which, as with the previous two such conflicts, actually consists of a series of regional wars, and shifting alliances of states. The actions of the social-imperialists in giving Left cover for imperialism, on the basis of it either “defending national independence”, or opposing undemocratic forces, has facilitated the increasing drive to war, which, this time, as nuclear war, will spell the end of humanity itself.

The call by Sanders, amounts to a call for a return of conscription, but, in the event of any such war, that would be irrelevant, as no amount of soldiers, or conventional weapons will be sufficient, as each side is vaporised in a thermonuclear holocaust. What the call does do, is simply give the drive to war an additional twist of the ratchet, and to prepare the ground for working-class grunts to be sent, in the next few years, not to fight Russia, but to go to fight further proxy wars, in the Middle-East, and elsewhere, as NATO seeks to denude the conventional forces of China and Russia, whilst seeking, in the meantime, to provoke internal rebellions, and fragmentation.

So, what then should be Marxists attitude to the call for a “Citizen Army”? Given that, in Britain, the vast majority of citizens are workers, a citizen army, means, in reality, “a workers army”, just as it is workers that comprise the industrial army that produces all of the country's wealth. However, despite the fact of it being workers that form this industrial army, and produce this wealth, it is not workers that either control that production of wealth, or have control over its distribution once produced. Despite the fact that it is workers that produce the factories and machines, dig up the raw materials, manufacture the components, as well as teaching the next generation, ensuring their health and so on, and also are the collective owners of the vast majority of this “socialised capital”, it is, instead, only shareholders (lenders of money) to these companies that get to exercise control.

The fact that the collective owners of this socialised capital (workers) do not get to control their own property, whilst non-owners (share-owners) do, exposes the sham nature of bourgeois-democracy, and bourgeois property laws. That democracy forms the basis of the property laws and other laws, in the country, and its geared to ensuring that the ruling-class, the owners of all of that interest-bearing capital (coupon clippers as Marx and Engels called them), get to exercise control over the state, and over all of the property from which the wealth of the state is generated, and, thereby, to ensure that the vast majority of that wealth is distributed to them, despite the fact that they create no part of that wealth.

It is from the ranks of this ruling class that the top brass of the state are drawn. They are the top civil servants, judges, military and so on. So, although the bourgeois-democracy, with its concession of periodic elections appears to give the majority of society control, or at least a say, in affairs, the reality, is that it is all merely superficial, and were the working-class ever to create a party that formed a government that even sought to give workers control over their own collective property, that state would do all in its power to prevent it, including, if required organising a coup against it. Democratic control by the majority of society, i.e. by the working class, can only ever be a charade, within the confines of bourgeois-parliamentary democracy. Even to enforce it, in conditions where workers sought to really defend their rights and interests, against the ruling-class, would require that the workers had their own extra-parliamentary forms of democracy, and organs of power. They would need their own directly elected, and immediately recallable workers' councils, as well as, their own democratically controlled workers' militia, armed by those workers' councils.

So, the attitude of Marxists to the idea of a citizen army, i.e. a workers' army, is much the same as our attitude to the idea of a worker' industrial army. That is, we are not hippy drop-outs, or deserters from the class struggle. We understand that capitalism exploits workers that form that industrial army, and that without the workers' labour, the capitalists could generate no wealth, or obtain the proceeds created by the workers. But, we don't argue that workers should just stop going to work, and drop-out. For one thing, the ruling class, with their massive hoards of money could survive by simply buying up existing stocks of food and so on, for much longer than can workers, which is why they are able to force workers to accept their exploitation in the first place. Whilst workers can stop work, for a time, by going on strike, when their real pay and conditions are reduced, they cannot do that indefinitely, and nor does it provide a solution to the real cause of their condition, which is the lack of control over their own collective property.

So, instead, Marxists try to patiently explain to workers that the real solution to this problem can only come from engaging in a political struggle to ensure that they gain that control over their collective property. As Marx put it in his Inaugural Address to the First International, the workers' cooperatives demonstrate, in practice the point, because, within them, the workers do exercise that control, but, to ensure that across the whole economy requires them to create their own political party that would change the law accordingly, removing the control that shareholders, currently, exercise, and handing it over to the workers where it belongs. But, no ruling class is going to sit back, and allow themselves to be simply voted out of existence. They would use all of the power of the state, including military power, to organise a coup to prevent it.

In the 19th century, Engels, examining this, in relation to Prussia, argued that this is why a Citizen Army, was, indeed, required, as the necessary corollary of universal suffrage. In other words, if all of the workers have the vote, and vote according to their interests, they would also need to form the army that enforced those laws, arms in hand, against the inevitable slave-owners revolt that the capitalist class would engage in.

“The more workers who are trained in the use of weapons the better. Universal conscription is the necessary and natural corollary of universal suffrage; it puts the voters in the position of being able to enforce their decisions gun in hand against any attempt at a coup d'état.

(The Prussian Military Question and the German Workers' Party)

Of course, this is only the case if the army itself does not suffer the same problems as the rest of society of the ruling class exercising control over it. The hierarchical structure of the army, as with the police force, and the fact that the top brass of these organisations are drawn from, and loyal to the ruling class, ensures that they too form the basis of the continued control by the ruling class. It would only begin to be changed if workers insisted on the most complete and consistent application of the concepts of bourgeois-democracy, which again, the ruling class, and its state would never concede. It would require that all top civil servants, judges, military brass, police chiefs and so on be elected, and instantly recallable. It would require that the rank and file soldiers and police officers had full democratic control, including the right to elect their immediate commanders, and so on.

Following the experience of the 1848 Revolutions, Marx and Engels had set out the implications of that, by insisting that the workers had to maintain their own political and organisational independence, and Marx had argued the need to resist the idea of a citizen's militia under the control of the bourgeoisie, and its officers, demanding instead, the creation of workers' militia, under the democratic control of workers communes.

“The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.”

(Marx 1850 Address To The Central Committee of The Communist League)

So, as I set out several years ago, we should, indeed, be in favour of a “Citizen's Army”, in the sense of it being, as Marx describes above, one that comprises workers, who form the vast majority of society, but it should be one that is created by, and directly under the control of the workers themselves. For that to happen, Marxists demand several things to occur first.

1. That the existing standing army be disbanded, and that, in the absence of that, all soldiers be given democratic rights to elect their immediate commanders, and so on, and that the military top brass be directly elected and immediately recallable by the electorate, and that this apply to the police force too.
   
   
2. That, in order to ensure that any Citizen's Militia, be truly democratic, and to ensure that weapons are not simply handed out willy-nilly to criminals, or to fascists and other reactionary enemies of the working-class, we need the establishment of directly elected workers' councils in each locality, the delegates to these councils to be directly elected, and immediately recallable by the workers in each workplace, in the given locality. These workers councils to be linked up across the country, and delegates from them sent to regional and national councils.
   
   
3. The arming of the workers, via the workers councils to be effected by placing all armaments production under direct democratic workers control.
   
   
4. In place of the existing standing army and police force, which acts to protect the interests of the ruling class against the interests of workers, the local workers councils should organise the community policing of each area, by workers themselves, the workers being given paid leave to fulfil such activity, as currently occurs with jury duty and so on. In each area, the local workers' militia, should form a part of the national militia, under the control of the national workers' council.
   
   
5. All workers forming part of the worker's militia, be given paid leave, and be provided with comprehensive training in weapons and military tactics. In the first instance, experienced working-class soldiers can be drafted to assist in such training.
   
   
6. Attempts should be made to link the national workers' council with similar such councils established by workers in the rest of Europe, and to, thereby, link the organised and democratically controlled workers' militia, across Europe, to ensure the defence of workers' interests with each other, across borders, against the warmongering interests of the ruling class, which seeks to set the workers of each country at the throat of their fellow workers for the benefit, purely, of the interests of the ruling class.

Of course, therefore, one of the first things that this “Citizen's Army” would seek to do, would be to insist that “the workers main enemy is at home”. It would not settle for the simple replacement of the Tweedle Dee government of Sunak, by the Tweedle Dummer government of Starmer, but would imply that workers had reached a level of consciousness, whereby they had created their own workers' party committed to fighting for their own class interests, against those of the ruling class. It would, as Engels suggested, simply legislate away the unjustified control over socialised capital, exercised by shareholders, and would do so with the power of an armed and democratically controlled “Citizen's Militia” standing behind it. That, of course, is far from what General Sanders, or other imperialist warmongers have in mind!

Of course, we are nowhere near any condition in which the working-class, in Britain, is about to create democratically elected workers' councils, or, thereby, proceed to the full scale arming of workers, and creation of workers' militia. That is no reason, as Trotsky, described, in relation to such demands during the Chinese Revolution, not to discuss them and, thereby, to patiently explain to workers, particularly the more advanced amongst them, the true nature of these demands, and of workers' democracy, as against the sham of bourgeois-democracy, and the nature of its state.

Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 2. The Division of Labour and Machinery - Part 7 of 10

In past societies, there was a social division of labour operated under fixed rules. The most obvious example of that is the caste system. However, the medieval guilds also established such rules, and monopolies with entry into each trade regulated, and requiring lengthy and costly apprenticeships and indenture. These rules and regulation arose out of the material conditions of the time, and only later became embodied in laws, and powerful social taboos etc., again most clearly seen in caste based societies.

“In this way, these different forms of the division of labour became so many bases of social organization. As for the division in the workshop, it was very little developed in all these forms of society.” (p 125-6)

As a general rule, Marx says, the less authority determines a social division of labour, the more a division of labour develops in the workshop, and becomes subjected to the authority of a single person. Marx, then, sets out the actual history of how the capitalist workshop, with this division of labour, comes into existence. This workshop, he explains, is not the modern factory, based on machine production, “but which is already no longer the industry of the artisans of the Middle Ages, nor domestic industry.” (p 126)

Before this workshop could arise, a primary accumulation of capital is required. Marx sets out several sources of this accumulation.

1. Discovery of America and import of cheaper precious metals, reducing the value of the money commodity, and standard of prices, resulting in inflation of industrial commodity prices and profits.

“In other words: to the extent that the propertied class and the working class, the feudal lords and the people, sank, to that extent the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie, rose.” (p 126)

2. The development of trade, and establishment of colonies, created larger markets, and so capacity for large-scale production, which is a requirement for capitalist production

3. Availability of day labourers coming into towns from rural areas, as feudal retinues are disbanded and lands are cleared for sheep rearing, to meet the needs of increased textile production, in the towns.

“The growth of the market, the accumulation of capital, the modification in the social position of the classes, a large number of persons being deprived of their sources of income, all these are historical preconditions for the formation of manufacture. It was not, as M. Proudhon says, friendly agreements between equals that brought men into the workshop. It was not even in the bosom of the old guilds that manufacture was born. It was the merchant that became head of the modern workshop, and not the old guildmaster. Almost everywhere there was a desperate struggle between manufacture and crafts.” (p 127)

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The Canton Insurrection, Democratic Dictatorship or a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat - Part 7 of 8

In both Russia and China, and the same applies to all industrialising economies, in the era of imperialism, the working-class is forced to carry through the tasks of the bourgeois revolution, in the process of fighting for its own class interests, but that does not mean that its goal is the creation of bourgeois-democracy, as the epigones presented it, or as suggested by the reformists and social-democrats. The actual struggle determines whether, and for how long a bourgeois parliament may be established, for example, but there is no reason why the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and its tasks, may not be carried through without any such institutions, instead, all being completed via soviets/workers and peasants councils, as part of the proletarian revolution.

“To advance at present the slogan of the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, when the role not only of the Chinese bourgeoisie but also of “democracy” has already been tested through and through, when it has become absolutely certain that “democracy” will, in the coming struggles, play its role of hangman even more than in the past, simply means to create the means of covering up the new forms of Guomindangism and to set a trap for the proletariat.” (p 137)

Similarly, as Trotsky sets out, in The Action Programme For France, Marxists, in the absence of workers having actually broken from bourgeois-democracy, completely, fight against attacks on it from fascists, but they undertake this fight on the basis of proletarian, not bourgeois methods. They oppose bans by the bourgeois state, or reliance on the police to deal with the fascists, instead relying on street mobilisations by workers, and the creation of workers' defence squads, militia, the creation of factory committees, workers' councils and so on. The emphasis is on fighting the fascists not supporting bourgeois-democratic institutions. Indeed, the whole point of fighting the fascists, using these proletarian means is to expose the sham of bourgeois democracy, and the superiority of workers' democracy, so as to break the workers away from their illusions in bourgeois-democracy, and move directly to a proletarian revolution.

Trotsky quotes Lenin's comment from 1917, that those that continued to argue for the Democratic Dictatorship (bourgeois-democracy) should be relegated to the archives of “Old Bolsheviks”, and had passed over into the ranks of the petty-bourgeois, in opposition to the workers. Even more is this the case where that bourgeois-democracy has long been established.

“Of course, it is by no means a question of calling the Communist Party of China immediately to revolt to capture power. The tempo depends entirely upon the circumstances.” (p 138)

The result of the defeats was to set the workers on the back foot, and that could not be changed by revolutionary phrase-mongering. And, Trotsky, also, sets out, again, the idiocy of the catastrophists who think that some kind of long depression is required to spur workers into radicalism.

“The verbiage, half concealed by the resolution of the ECCI, about an imminent revolutionary resurgence, because numberless people are being executed in China and a terrific commercial and industrial crisis is raging in the country, is criminal light-mindedness and nothing else. After three overwhelming defeats, an economic crisis does not rouse, but on the contrary depresses the proletariat, which, as it is, has already been bled white; the executions only destroy the politically weakened Party.” (p 138)

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Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 2. The Division of Labour and Machinery - Part 6 of 10

Marx quotes Proudhon, at length, where he sets out his argument that machinery is the antithesis/antidote to the division of labour. Proudhon says that a machine is,

“A way of uniting different portions of labour which had been separated by the division of labour. Every machine can be defined as a summary of several operations.... Thus, through the machine there will be a restoration of the worker.... Machinery, which in political economy places itself in contradiction to the division of labour, represents synthesis, which in the human mind is opposed to analysis.” (p 124)

But, as Marx points out, this division of labour, as against the previously described social division of labour, only arises after the development of the workshop and factory production. This division of labour is a consequence of, not a cause of factory production. Proudhon also says,

“Division merely separated the different parts of labour, letting each one devote himself to the speciality which most suited him; the workshop groups the workers according to the relation of each part to the whole.... It introduces the principle of authority in labour.” (p 124)

If what is meant is the social division of labour, then, its true that, as independent commodity production expanded, some of these producers specialised in spinning, some in weaving and so on. But, most of this was driven by the expansion of towns, which, in turn, was spurred by the disbanding of the old feudal retinues, and a continual flow, into the towns, of failed peasants and agricultural workers. The majority of social production continued to be direct production, in which there was very little, even of this social division of labour. Inside the peasant household, it amounted only to different members doing more of the spinning, whilst others did weaving and so on.

Marx notes,

“The separation of the different parts of labour, leaving to each one the opportunity of devoting himself to the speciality best suited to him – a separation which M. Proudhon dates from the beginning of the world – exists only in modern industry under the rule of competition.” (p 124)

And, contrary to Proudhon, its not this division of labour that results in the capitalist arising as an authority over labour, but the failure of individual commodity producers, who, then, find themselves formally subordinated to capital. Proudhon give a romanticised version of history, reminiscent of Rousseau, and The Social Contract, in which someone seizes upon the idea of division of labour, and proposes it to their fellow citizens, each acting as equals, who, then, as a result of this division, results in them becoming the workmen of the capitalist who first proposed the idea. In other words, a reworking of Rousseau's idea that man begins free, but everywhere is in chains. Proudhon says,

“But this is not all; the machine or the workshop, after degrading the worker by giving him a master, completes his abasement by making him sink from the rank of artisan to that of common labourer.... The period we are going through at the moment, that of machinery, is distinguished by a special characteristic, the wage worker. The wage worker is subsequent to the division of labour and to exchange.” (p 124)

However, this is false as already described. The Putting Out System involved the labourer being paid a wage, as did the handicraft workshop and manufacture. This precedes the development both of the division of labour, and machine production.

“Society as a whole has this in common with the interior of a workshop, that it too has its division of labour. If one took as a model the division of labour in a modern workshop, in order to apply it to a whole society, the society best organized for the production of wealth would undoubtedly be that which had a single chief employer, distributing tasks to different members of the community according to a previously fixed rule. But this is by no means the case. While inside the modern workshop the division of labour is meticulously regulated by the authority of the employer, modern society has no other rule, no other authority for the distribution of labour than free competition.” (p 125)

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The Canton Insurrection, Democratic Dictatorship or a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat - Part 6 of 8

China, indeed, continued to face enormous tasks, in terms of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, removing all of the remnants of oriental despotism, slavery and colonialism. But, that was precisely why those tasks could not be resolved by the amorphous forces of the peasantry and petty-bourgeoisie. That a peasant army, under Mao Zedong, carried through such a revolution, in 1949, depended on particular historic conditions, during and after WWII, in which British colonialism was in retreat, Japanese imperialism, which had swept across China, was defeated, and facing a rapidly advancing USSR, which also provided support for the Chinese Communist Party.

“The unification and emancipation of China is now an international task. It is no less international than the existence of the USSR. This task can be solved only by means of a desperate struggle of the suppressed, hungry and downtrodden masses under the direct leadership of the proletarian vanguard, a struggle not only against world imperialism, but also against its economic and political agency in China – the bourgeoisie, including also the “national” and democratic bourgeois flunkeys. And that is the road, leading towards the proletarian dictatorship.” (p 134)

Unfortunately, this prognosis was proved correct, in the case of both the USSR and China, in the negative. Both sank into a bourgeois-counter-revolution, presided over by an anti-working-class, Bonapartist regime. Trotsky sets out the timeline of the Russian Revolution, as described by Lenin. Between November 1917 and July 1918, the workers and peasants carried out the agrarian revolution. This is the period of Peasant War, as against proletarian revolution. The workers, during this period, were still experimenting with workers' control, rather than the confiscation of the means of production, a process which was introduced at a forced pace, under War Communism, as a consequence of the Civil War, and imperialist intervention.

“In other words, that which the theoretical formula of “the dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry” sought to unite was disunited in the course of the actual class struggle.” (p 135)

It was also during the course of the proletarian revolution that the agrarian revolution was actually accomplished.

“This is the dialectical dissociation of the democratic dictatorship which the leaders of the ECCI failed to understand. They have landed in a political blind alley, mechanically condemning any “skipping over the bourgeois-democratic stage” and endeavouring to guide the historical process by means of circular letters.” (p 135)

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Chapter II, The Metaphysics of Political Economy, 2. Division of Labour and Machinery - Part 5 of 10

As Engels describes, in his Supplement to Capital III, the price the spinner sold the yarn to the merchant for, only allowed the merchant to make the average commercial profit, but, now, the merchant negotiates a price for the yarn that only pays the spinner the equivalent of a wage, which is less than the new value the spinner has added. So, in addition to the previous commercial profit, the merchant, now, obtains the surplus value the spinner has created by their labour, i.e. the difference between the new value created by their labour, and the value of their labour-power/wages.

As Lenin, describes, in his analysis of the development of capitalism in Russia, there are several variations on this. For example, the Buyer-Up, is an independent commodity producer themselves, but who produces on a larger-scale, possibly having more family members as workers, and so on, and whose larger-scale production means they have economies in selling into markets. They accumulate money from these sales, which, then, allows them to offer to take their neighbours commodities to market, and to buy those commodities from them below their value, to cover the cost.

This is the genesis of capitalist production in the towns. The same is true with the workshop, except that the various spinners, weavers, wheelwrights and so on are brought together under one roof. But, at first, they continue to operate as before, as individual handicraft producers, bringing their existing tools etc. with them. As Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, this primitive accumulation of capital, does not represent any considerable expansion of it, but only this concentration and centralisation of the existing means of production in a few places. Indeed, at first, the handicraft workers, in the workshop, individually negotiate a price for their output with the capitalist workshop owner, much as did the worker in the Putting Out System, and so this price tends to reinforce the idea that what they are being paid for is their individual concrete labour. Its why, as set out, in Capital I, a lot of the analysis by the earlier economists, was based on this idea that what was being sold was labour, not labour-power, and so had to explain, and subsequently justify, the existence of profits, because, if the worker was being paid for the labour they provided, i.e. the value added, the wage would be equal to that value, leaving nothing for profit.

The workshop or manufactory offers advantages for the capitalist, because they can enjoy economies of scale, in the purchase of materials and so on, but, one such advantage is in terms of energy. A water-wheel can drive several machines, and so the limitations of machines depending on human motive power is ended. That is why these earlier factories, utilising machinery, are located on rivers, as with Arkwright's mill, prior to the intervention of steam-power. But, the spinning-machine is a different technology to the spindle or the spinning-wheel. The spinning machine reduces the worker to being an appendage of the machine, a machine minder, a function that any average person can perform.

But, even before the introduction of machine production, the move of handicraft production into the workshop/manufactory starts the process of division of labour within it. The social division of labour involves different members of society specialising in the production of different products, for example, some members of a tribe being hunters, whilst others specialise in agriculture, or the production of pottery. But, the division of labour, in the factory, involves breaking down the production of any given product into a series of much smaller activities, each of which becomes the realm of different workers, as with Adam Smith's pin.

As soon as this process begins, as Marx describes, in Capital I, with workers becoming “detail workers”, and so on, a further social change goes along with it. The individual handicraft worker, say a spinner, working in a workshop/factory, is formally subordinated to capital. It is the capital of the private capitalist that employs them, their labour and its product is alienated to the capitalist. But, they remain a producer of an actual commodity – yarn – that is sold on the market. If their condition changes, they could, again, become an independent commodity producer of yarn. But, when they become a producer of a component of the yarn, or some other commodity, that is no longer the case. When they become only the minder of machine, so that their labour is only machine-minding labour/factory labour, the possibility of independence is gone. They are, then, really subordinated to capital.

“Labour is organized, is divided differently according to the instruments it disposes over. The hand-mill presupposes a different division of labour from the steam-mill. Thus, it is slapping history in the face to want to begin by the division of labour in general, in order to get subsequently to a specific instrument of production, machinery.

Machinery is no more an economic category than the bullock that drags the plough. Machinery is merely a productive force. The modern workshop, which depends on the application of machinery, is a social production relation, an economic category.” (p 123-4)

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The Canton Insurrection, Democratic Dictatorship or a Dictatorship Of The Proletariat - Part 5 of 8

Trotsky notes that, in China, the period after 1927, was one of counter-revolution, not bourgeois-democratic revolution. The ECCI had concluded that the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic, national revolution had not been completed, and so it was this that characterised the nature of the revolution. This showed they had not learned the recent lessons in China, nor those of Russia in 1917.

“The revolution of February 1917 in Russia left unsolved all the internal and international problems which led to the revolution – feudalism in the villages, the old bureaucracy, the war and the economic ruin. Based upon this, not only the SRs and the Mensheviks, but also a considerable section of the leaders of our own party, tried to show Lenin that the “present period of the revolution is a period of the bourgeois-democratic revolution”. On this essential point, the resolution of the ECCI merely copies the objections made to Lenin in 1917 by the opportunists, against the struggle for the proletarian dictatorship.” (p 132)

The resolution also noted that, in China, not only had these tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution not been accomplished, but, unlike Russia, where the peasants had thrown up the S.R.'s, represented in the soviets, and in the revolutionary government, established with the Bolsheviks, no such revolutionary, bourgeois-democratic government had been established. The KMT represented the bourgeoisie, and it was only the CP that represented the proletariat and peasantry, but Stalin's policy forbade it from establishing soviets, or struggling for power, which would have meant accepting permanent revolution.

But, far from acknowledging that PR had again been validated, by the recent events, in China, the ECCI resolution concluded that “the tendency to skip over the bourgeois-democratic phase:

“... is all [!] the more harmful because such a formulation of the question excludes [?] the greatest national peculiarity of the Chinese revolution, which is a semi-colonial revolution.”

The only meaning that these senseless words can have is that the imperialist yoke will be overthrown by some sort of dictatorship other than the proletarian. But this means that the “greatest national peculiarity” has been dragged in at the last moment only in order to present in bright colours the Chinese national-bourgeois or the Chinese petty-bourgeois “democracy”. They can have no other meaning.” (p 133-4)

Again, we have seen this approach taken by all of the “anti-imperialists”, who seek to ignore the anti-working-class nature of the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois national movements with which they bloc, and which, every time, results in catastrophe for the working-class, and the cause of international socialism. It is rightly described as “idiot anti-imperialism”, and the approach of the USC and its supporters fits that description to the letter.

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Northern Soul Classics - I'll Always Love You - Sam Moultrie

 

Friday Night Disco - How Sweet It Is - Junior Walker & The All Stars

 

Michael Roberts' One Trick Pony Theory of Everything

In this week's Weekly Worker, Michael Roberts writes,

“However, huge investment in machinery and tech components over labour has led to a long-term fall in the profitability of capital (à la Marx).”

This is nonsense, and reflects Roberts' continued failure to understand Marx's theory of crises, and his Law of The Tendency For The Rate of Profit To Fall. For Marx and Engels, there can be a generalised crisis of overproduction of commodities, which, for example, Mill, Ricardo and Say denied (Mill's Law of Market's/Say's Law). Marx and Engels explain, for example, in The Poverty of Philosophy, and in detail in Theories of Surplus Value (specifically, Chapter 17) that, Say's Law applies only in systems of barter. As soon as, even pre-capitalist, economies, engaged in commodity production and exchange, mediated by money, the potential for such crises exists, because, the money commodity is demanded, not to be consumed, but to be used solely as medium of exchange, or means of payment. But, as such, there is no necessity for a seller to then immediately, or ever, to become a buyer of some other commodity. They can simply save/hoard the money commodity, for use maybe later, or simply as a store of wealth. As Marx puts it,

“In the first place, if we consider only the nature of the commodity, there is nothing to prevent all commodities from being superabundant on the market, and therefore all falling below their price. We are here only concerned with the factor of crisis. That is all commodities, apart from money [may be superabundant]. [The proposition] the commodity must be converted into money, only means that: all commodities must do so. And just as the difficulty of undergoing this metamorphosis exists for an individual commodity, so it can exist for all commodities. The general nature of the metamorphosis of commodities—which includes the separation of purchase and sale just as it does their unity—instead of excluding the possibility of a general glut, on the contrary, contains the possibility of a general glut.”

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17)

For Ricardo, this error derives from his false conception of money, as merely currency, means of circulation, which also formed the basis of his error in relation to the quantity theory of money. For Ricardo, money acts merely as currency, with the values of the commodities exchanged being quantitatively determined by the labour required for their production. For Ricardo, as for some of his modern-day equivalents, demand plays no role in this determination of that value. So, the total value of commodities is taken as given, and, so, whilst demand for some commodities might be less than the supply, causing their market price to fall, the demand for other commodities is, thereby, greater than supply, causing their market prices to rise.

“Money is not only “the medium by which the exchange is effected” (l.c., p. 341), but at the same time the medium by which the exchange of product with product is divided into two acts, which are independent of each other, and separate in time and space. With Ricardo, however, this false conception of money is due to the fact that he concentrates exclusively on the quantitative determination of exchange-value, namely, that it is equal to a definite quantity of labour-time, forgetting on the other hand the qualitative characteristic, that individual labour must present itself as abstract, general social labour only through its alienation.”

(ibid)

In other words, Ricardo makes the same mistake as that made by Proudhon, and criticised by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy, and most pointedly by Engels in his Preface to it.

“whether it is expended under normal average social conditions or not. Whether the producers take ten days, or only one, to make products which could be made in one day; whether they employ the best or the worst tools; whether they expend their labour time in the production of socially necessary articles and in the socially required quantity, or whether they make quite undesired articles or desired articles in quantities above or below demand – about all this there is not a word: labour is labour, the product of equal labour must be exchanged against the product of equal labour.”

(Engels Preface, p 16-17)

In other words, it is not simply a question of the quantity of labour (even abstract labour) expended on production that determines the value of the commodity, but whether that labour is itself socially necessary. This is not merely a question of ephemeral fluctuations in demand and supply that cancel each other out, and result in the movement of market prices now above and now below the market value of the commodity, but of a structural imbalance. As Marx puts it, setting out this role of demand, in determining what constitutes socially necessary labour, and so, value,

“Here a great confusion: (1) This identity of supply, so that it is a demand measured by its own amount, is true only to the extent that it is exchange value = to a certain amount of objectified labour. To that extent it is the measure of its own demand -- as far as value is concerned. But, as such a value, it first has to be realized through the exchange for money, and as object of exchange for money it depends (2) on its use value, but as use value it depends on the mass of needs present for it, the demand for it. But as use value it is absolutely not measured by the labour time objectified in it, but rather a measuring rod is applied to it which lies outside its nature as exchange value.”

(Grundrisse)

Consequently, as Marx describes, the idea that there can be partial overproduction of some commodities, compensated by an underproduction of others, is a poor way out, for Ricardo et al.

“At a given moment, the supply of all commodities can be greater than the demand for all commodities, since the demand for the general commodity, money, exchange-value, is greater than the demand for all particular commodities, in other words the motive to turn the commodity into money, to realise its exchange-value, prevails over the motive to transform the commodity again into use-value.”

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17)

A generalised crisis of overproduction of commodities is, then, a potential without it being a crisis of overproduction of capital, for the simple reason that it can occur, in any money economy, be it a capitalist economy or not. However, as Marx sets out, the reverse is not true. A crisis of overproduction of capital (i.e. an overabundance of capital relative to the supply of labour/social working-day) is necessarily also an overproduction of commodities, because the components of capital are themselves commodities, i.e. machines, buildings, raw materials and so on. The crisis of overproduction of capital arises, as Marx describes in The Grundrisse, Capital, and Theories of Surplus Value, because, properly understood, capital is not a thing, but a social relation. Expansion of capital is expansion of this relation, expansion of the working-class. But, if one side of this relation – the expansion of the components of capital (machines, factories, materials) – expands faster than the labour supply, then the mass of surplus value cannot be expanded proportionately, or even at all.

If the working-class is not expanding, and is already working to the limits of the working-day, then absolute surplus value cannot be increased. Any expansion of capital, will bring no increase in absolute surplus value, and so a fall in the rate of profit, even if the rate of surplus value, remains constant. But, in such conditions, this excess demand for labour, leads to increased competition between firms for that labour, and a lessening of the competition between workers for employment. The first effects, as Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, is that capital seeks to employ the existing workers for longer, by paying them higher rates for overtime. That brings about the potential for additional surplus value to be produced – because more labour is undertaken – but, at the cost of a lower rate of surplus value, and consequently a lower rate of profit.

As this excess demand for labour continues – itself, now, also fuelled by workers having more wages to use to increase consumption of wage goods, and so increase the demand for labour and means of production to produce them – firms have to not only pay overtime rates, but also higher hourly rates of pay, further reducing relative surplus value, and the overall rate of surplus value, and consequently, rate of profit. As hourly wages rise, workers begin to demand a reduced working-day, more holidays and so on, thereby, reducing absolute surplus value, too.

“Given the necessary means of production, i.e. , a sufficient accumulation of capital, the creation of surplus-value is only limited by the labouring population if the rate of surplus-value, i.e., the intensity of exploitation, is given; and no other limit but the intensity of exploitation if the labouring population is given...

There would be absolute over-production of capital as soon as additional capital for purposes of capitalist production = 0. The purpose of capitalist production, however, is self-expansion of capital, i.e., appropriation of surplus-labour, production of surplus-value, of profit. As soon as capital would, therefore, have grown in such a ratio to the labouring population that neither the absolute working-time supplied by this population, nor the relative surplus working-time, could be expanded any further (this last would not be feasible at any rate in the case when the demand for labour were so strong that there were a tendency for wages to rise); at a point, therefore, when the increased capital produced just as much, or even less, surplus-value than it did before its increase, there would be absolute over-production of capital; i.e., the increased capital C + ΔC would produce no more, or even less, profit than capital C before its expansion by ΔC. In both cases there would be a steep and sudden fall in the general rate of profit, but this time due to a change in the composition of capital not caused by the development of the productive forces, but rather by a rise in the money-value of the variable capital (because of increased wages) and the corresponding reduction in the proportion of surplus-labour to necessary labour.”

(Capital, Vol. III, Chapter 15)

The crisis of overproduction of capital, therefore, is not a consequence of The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, as Roberts maintains, as his sole explanation of capitalist crises. On the contrary, the latter is a consequence of the measures adopted by capital, to the overproduction of capital relative to labour supply/social working day. The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, Marx sets out, is based upon the use of new labour-saving technologies that raise social productivity, thereby, removing the problem of inadequate labour supply, and creating a relative surplus population. It brings higher productivity, and consequently, higher relative surplus value, as well as increasing competition between workers and reducing it between firms, so making possible a clawing back of some of those reductions in the working day etc.

Taken in the long historic sweep of capitalist development, these new labour-saving technologies, raise productivity, and, thereby, the rate of surplus value. Compared to the conditions of crisis, contrary to Roberts' argument, they result in a rise, not a fall in the rate of profit, which is precisely why firms introduce them! Only comparing the rate of profit over one cycle compared to another, does this create the conditions for a fall in the general rate of profit, because, the consequence of the higher productivity is that a greater quantity of raw material is, now, processed by the same amount of labour so that c, the value of this processed raw material, rises relative to v + s. For example, if previously 100 kilos of cotton (£10) was processed by 10 hours labour, with the latter dividing 5 hours for wages (£5) and 5 hours for profit (£5), the rate of profit is 5/(10 + 5) = 33.3% If, a new machine means that, now, 200 kilos of cotton are processed, by this same labour, the rate of profit falls to 5/(20+5) = 20%.

However, as Marx also describes in Theories of Surplus Value, even this is an overstating of the role of the Law of The Tendency For The Rate of Profit to Fall.

“It is an incontrovertible fact that, as capitalist production develops, the portion of capital invested in machinery and raw materials grows, and the portion laid out in wages declines. This is the only question with which both Ramsay and Cherbuliez are concerned. For us, however, the main thing is: does this fact explain the decline in the rate of profit? (A decline, incidentally, which is far smaller than it is said to be.) Here it is not simply a question of the quantitative ratio but of the value ratio.”

(Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 23)

Marx makes clear that this long-term fall is “ far smaller than it is said to be”, and indeed, only perceptible, if at all, over the long-term. Hardly the fundamental driver of crises that Roberts seeks to make it out to be. Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value Parts I and II, that there is an interaction between these various factors that determine the technical composition of capital, and the value composition, with the former being the determinant of the organic composition. A rise in the technical composition means that productivity rises, so that the quantity of material processed, rises relative to the labour required to process it.

However, as Marx sets out in this chapter, that same rise in productivity, reduces the value of the materials being processed, causing a fall in the value composition of capital. If the rise in the technical composition is smaller than the fall in the value composition, then, rather than falling, the rate of profit would rise. For example, using the previous example, if the rise in social productivity caused the value of cotton to fall, so that the 200 kilos now processed, has a value of only £5, the rate of profit would rise to 5/(5 + 5) = 50%.

Similarly, this rise in productivity, means that the value of the fixed capital, also falls, if not absolutely, then relatively. If, previously, a spinning wheel (£10) was used to spin the 100 kilos of cotton (£0.10 per kilo), the rate of profit was 5/(10 + 10 + 5) = 20%. Now, if a spinning machine (£10) processes 200 kilos (£0.05 per kilo), the rate of profit rises to 5/(10 + 5 + 5) = 25%, and if the value of the spinning machine, itself, were only £5, 5/(5 + 5 + 5) = 33.3%.

Marx sets out, for example, in Capital III, Chapter 6, that this rise in social productivity progressively cheapens fixed capital, and a smaller portion of its value is also transferred to the end product. The Law of The Tendency For The Rate of Profit To Fall, depends upon the rise in the technical composition of capital bringing about a greater increase in the quantity of material processed than the fall in its unit value, brought about by that same rise in social productivity. Marx believed that would be the case, because, in his day, the large majority of those raw materials dependent upon primary, and particularly agricultural production, and the ability to reduce the unit value of these commodities was limited by nature. 

However, even then, Marx notes that not only is the fall in the rate of profit, very small, and detectable only over long periods, but it is offset by these other factors. Fixed capital is cheapened, both relatively and absolutely, raw materials are cheapened, and, as became more apparent in the twentieth century, synthetic and manufactured alternatives are introduced, waste is reduced, and, moreover, the cheapening of wage goods, brings about a reduction in the value of labour-power, and rise in the rate of surplus value.

So, Marx notes that these changes cancel out the small fall in the rate of profit.

“The cheapening of raw materials, and of auxiliary materials; etc., checks but does not cancel the growth in the value of this part of capital. It checks it to the degree that it brings about a fall in profit.”

(ibid)

Yet, despite all of Marx's explanation, Roberts insists on claiming that this tendential law is the deux ex machina behind all of capitalist crises, and, indeed, central to much of his other analysis of the world. But, his claim, in this article, set out at the start, is ridiculous. Let us assume that his argument in relation to the tendential law were correct, and that the accumulation of large amounts of fixed capital, relative to labour, brings about an actual fall in the rate of profit. That would still not support his argument in relation to Taiwanese semiconductor production, for several obvious reasons.

Firstly, Taiwan is not the only semi-conductor producer, and so its production does not determine the global market value of semiconductors, only the individual value of Taiwanese semiconductors. If that individual is lower than the global market value, which is what would be expected if it has raised its level of productivity by such investment, then, it will sell its output at the higher global market value, making a surplus profit, equal to the difference between the individual value of its production, and the global market value. In other words, not reducing its rate of profit, as Roberts argues, but increasing it. Marx, made the same point about the massive investment in fixed capital by British textile producers, in the 19^th century, that enabled them, also, to make such surplus profits, compared to European and other producers, and even to do so, whilst paying higher wages.

“But the law of value in its international application is yet more modified by the fact that on the world-market the more productive national labour reckons also as the more intense, so long as the more productive nation is not compelled by competition to lower the selling price of its commodities to the level of their value.”

(Capital I, Chapter 22)

In addition, Roberts seems to have forgotten the real significance of The Law of the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall, for Marx, which is its role in relation to the determination of the average rate of profit, prices of production, and, thereby, the allocation of capital to different spheres of production. Marx sets out that where the organic composition of capital is higher than the average (assuming the same rate of turnover of capital), then the rate of profit, in that sphere would be lower, for the reasons previously described. However, for that very reason, Marx explains that because capital is advanced in order to make at least this average profit (in fact, in search of the highest rate of profit) it would be necessarily under-supplied to such areas, causing the supply of those commodities to be less than the demand, at the market value, and so causing their price of production to rise, up to the point, at which capital employed in that sphere, could obtain the average rate.

If capital accumulated more rapidly in semiconductor production, than other spheres, this was driven by the fact of higher rates of profit in that sphere, and desire to grab some of it. Indeed, we have seen, in recent years, significant shortages of semiconductors, causing global market prices for them to rise sharply, and profits from those higher prices, along with it. As with all such periodic splurges of investment, it inevitably results in a glut, at some point, and consequent sharp drop in prices and profits, but it is, then, a consequence of an overproduction of those commodities, not of The Law of The Tendency for The Rate of Profit to Fall, which is Roberts' one-trick pony explanation for everything.