Competition, then, as a result of this “bad” side, tends to destroy itself, and establish monopoly, but, as competition is a principle higher than political liberty, it must be sustained, and so monopoly constrained. In Proudhon's approach, here, we can see the later ideas of libertarians like Mises and Hayek, and other petty-bourgeois liberals, and Stalinists with their support for “anti-monopoly alliances”, anti-monopoly legislation, and so on. It is also the basis of sovereigntism, and petty-bourgeois nationalism, utopian “anti-imperialism” etc.
“M. Proudhon talks of nothing but modern monopoly engendered by competition. But we all know that competition was engendered by feudal monopoly. Thus competition was originally the opposite of monopoly and not monopoly the opposite of competition. So that modern monopoly is not a simple antithesis, it is on the contrary the true synthesis.
Thesis: Feudal monopoly, before competition.
Antithesis: Competition.
Synthesis: Modern monopoly, which is the negation of feudal monopoly, in so far as it implies the system of competition, and the negation of competition in so far as it is monopoly.
Thus modern monopoly, bourgeois monopoly, is synthetic monopoly, the negation of the negation, the unity of opposites. It is monopoly in the pure, normal, rational state.” (p 139)
It is this condition, and the social forms that arise upon it, reaching their most mature form under imperialism, that establishes the transitional forms between capitalism and socialism, described by Marx in Value, Price and Profit, Capital III, Chapter 27 and so on. As Lenin also put it,
“To make things even clearer, let us first of all take the most concrete example of state capitalism. Everybody knows what this example is. It is Germany. Here we have “the last word” in modern large-scale capitalist engineering and planned organisation, subordinated to Junker-bourgeois imperialism. Cross out the words in italics, and in place of the militarist, Junker, bourgeois, imperialist state put also a state, but of a different social type, of a different class content—a Soviet state, that is, a proletarian state, and you will have the sum total of the conditions necessary for socialism...
“. . . For socialism is merely the next step forward from state-capitalist monopoly.
“. . . State-monopoly capitalism is a complete material preparation for socialism, the threshold of socialism, a rung on the ladder of history between which and the rung called socialism there are no intermediate rungs”
For Proudhon, the idea of competition, and of monopoly, is good, because he sees, in both, eternal categories, but, the reality of both, for him, is bad. Marx notes,
“In practical life we find not only competition, monopoly and the antagonism between them, but also the synthesis of the two, which is not a formula, but a movement. Monopoly produces competition, competition produces monopoly. Monopolists are made from competition; competitors become monopolists. If the monopolists restrict their mutual competition by means of partial associations, competition increases among the workers; and the more the mass of the proletarians grows as against the monopolists of one nation, the more desperate competition becomes between the monopolists of different nations. The synthesis is of such a character that monopoly can only maintain itself by continually entering into the struggle of competition.” (p 140)
This is also the driving force for imperialism. Colonialism was a means of sustaining feudal monopolies. It allowed landlords to appropriate additional foreign lands, and so extract additional rent; it allowed merchant monopolies to engage in foreign trade, on the basis of unequal exchange, in protected markets. But, imperialism is the means of breaking down those monopolies and protected markets, just as had happened with the creation of the nation state. As the capitals, within each state, rapidly outgrew the limits of the nation state, they must establish larger single markets in which to operate. Each nation state seeks to expand beyond its borders, by annexation and conquest, as happened with the US Civil War, the US annexation of Mexican territory, the Franco-Prussian War, and the European wars of 1914-18/1939-45.
No comments:
Post a Comment