The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 6 of 10

In Spain, the bourgeois Republican government, as Orwell said, kept the best weapons for itself, so as to slap down the workers if need be, whilst the Spanish Stalinists were armed by the USSR and other Stalinists, and, as in China, with Stalin seeking to sabotage proletarian revolution, and court the support of “democratic imperialism”, they too were kept in their grasp, and used to suppress their revolutionary opponents.

“To [the CP], winning the war meant winning it for the Communist Party and they were always ready to sacrifice military advantage to prevent a rival party on their own side from strengthening its position.”

(Gerald Brennan, The Spanish Labyrinth)

The position of the Stalinists themselves was summed up by their Spanish representatives.

To show to the forces of "democratic imperialism" its good faith, the Stalinists made clear that they had no desire for revolution in Spain.

Jesus Hernandes, Editor of the CP's daily newspaper, El Mundo, wrote on August 6th 1936,

“It is absolutely false that the present workers' movement has for its object the establishment of a proletarian dictatorship after the war has terminated. It cannot be said that we have a social motive for our participation in the war. We communists are the first to repudiate this supposition. We are motivated exclusively by a desire to defend the democratic republic.”

As with the French CP in 1968, the Spanish CP also fleshed out the words of Hernandes, by standing against the direct action of the workers as they established their own factory committees and engaged in occupations. Jose Diaz, speaking in March 1937, to the CP Central Committee opposed this direct action saying,

“At the present time when there is a government of the Popular Front, in which all the forces engaged in the fight against fascism are represented, such things are not only not desirable, but absolutely impermissible.”

(Communist International, May 1937)

As Trotsky points out, in relation to China, whilst Lenin, and The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, does talk about the revolutionary forces organised by the communists, in any such struggle, making temporary, tactical alliances with the forces of bourgeois-democracy, against imperialism/fascism, this did not at all mean alliances with the bourgeois-democratic parties/governments, but with the petty-bourgeois masses themselves.

“Lenin, it is understood, recognized the necessity of a temporary alliance with the bourgeois-democratic movement, but he understood by this, of course, not an alliance with the bourgeois parties, duping and betraying the petty-bourgeois revolutionary democracy (the peasants and the small city folk), but an alliance with the organizations and groupings of the masses themselves – against the national bourgeoisie.” ( p 267)

Again, here, today's social-imperialists, many of whom, still ludicrously claim to be “Trotskyists”, in fact, push the same opportunist, class collaborationist line as that of Stalin/Bukharin, in China, Spain etc., but worse. They not only propose an alliance with bourgeois parties, but with bourgeois, indeed imperialist governments/states!

The consequence of that opportunism, in China, was that the KMT was able to organise its coup, and slaughter the workers. We've seen the same repeated time and again, in Korea, Algeria, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Burma, Iran, Iraq and on ad nauseum, with only the degree of slaughter, and pace of its execution different. Yet, the petty-bourgeois, nationalist “Left” never learns, and still insists that support for these nationalists is “Trotskyism”! In turn, in conditions where the social weight of the peasantry, in the CP, increased, that manifest as a turn towards guerrilla warfare, establishing a new trend, as Stalinism branched into Maoism/Guevarism, and so on, each as petty-bourgeois deviations, owing more to anarchism than to Marxism.

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 6 of 19

The failure of the working-class to sweep away this class of money-lending leaches, whose immediate interests are antagonistic even to that of real capital, and which has led to money being diverted into useless speculation, blowing up asset price bubbles that subsequently burst, with serious effects on the real economy, is the consequence of its political leadership collapsing into the pre-Marxist, moralistic socialism of the likes of Sismondi. But, there is a material basis for that too, resulting in yet another contradiction that has reached the point of crisis.

In the post-war period, Stalinism still exerted a huge dead weight on the global working-class. It reflected the interests of the petty-bourgeois bureaucracy in the USSR, and its satellites. In the developed capitalist economies, the Stalinist parties simply merged into the wider social-democracy, itself reflecting that large professional, middle-class layer that saw society as a mechanism, and its social role being to ensure its smooth operation, mediating between capital and labour. As a new Left emerged critical of the role of Stalinism, it too was a reflection of the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, this time as reflected in its largely studentist, and academic membership. It carried with it the same petty-bourgeois moralism, and the same views of reliance on the role of the state, and managerialism in effecting change.

For much of the post-war period, as global capital expanded, as part of the process of long wave uptrend, running from 1949 to 1974, these deficiencies could be accommodated, and were disguised as the rising social weight of the working-class imposed itself. But, it was always a dead end. As soon as the period of uptrend ceased, and a new period of crisis began after 1974, all of the limitations of the political leadership of the labour movement, began to become apparent. For a while, the strength of the working-class compensated for it, as seen in the victory of the British miners, in 1972 and 1974, over Ted Heath's Conservative government.

But, the limitations, even then, were apparent, in the demands and slogans put forward, such as “Labour Take the Power”, as though power rested in parliament rather than in the state, and the limited aspiration expressed by “General Strike To Kick Out The Tories”, as though, if workers had reached the level of class consciousness to engage in such an overtly political general strike, they should limit their sights only to a change of bourgeois government, rather than seizing state power themselves!

When the Heath Conservative government was kicked out by the voters, the reality, manifest in Wilson, and then Callaghan's Labour governments was not that different, and not surprisingly, as the underlying ideology of Heath and Wilson, of conservative social-democracy, was, essentially the same, “Buttskellism” as it was termed in the post-war period. Wilson, followed by Callaghan, simply continued the struggle against the working-class, intensified as the decade progressed, and the crisis phase of the long wave cycle became more acute. And, when Thatcher took over that task, in 1979, the conditions were already set for the working-class to be defeated, as the political leadership of the class was totally inadequate, armed not with the arsenal of Marxism, but that of petty-bourgeois socialism, reformism, statism and syndicalism.

The Left, today, continues to be useless, operating on the basis of mantras and formulations based on misrepresentation and misunderstanding of the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. It proceeds as though capitalist property, today, is, essentially, the same as that of the early 19th century, and that its ownership is basically the same, of the “monopoly of private capital”, only, now, in the form of capitalist monopolies, and share ownership. It misses, almost entirely, the significance of the fundamental change in the nature of capitalist property, into socialised capital, and the social revolution it signifies. Consequently, it can make no distinction between the objective interests of the ruling class as owners of fictitious-capital, as against the interests of the dominant form of property, i.e. large-scale socialised capital.

When it examines, therefore, the actions of states, it cannot understand the contradictions inherent within them, leading to all sorts of contortions to explain its actions. That is even more the case when it, also, has to explain the actions of governments. We are repeatedly told, for example, that, in Britain, the Tory Party (and, today, it is best described as a Protectionist Tory Party, in its early 19th century connotation, rather than a Peelite Conservative Party, as it emerged from the Repeal of the Corn Laws) is the bourgeoisie's “first team”, as against Labour being its second team. Yet, from the mid 90's, at least, the Tory Party's agenda was clearly that of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, not that of the ruling class, and its pushing through of Brexit is totemic of that.

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Wage-labour and Capital, Section II - Part 5 of 6

However, partly for the reasons already discussed, commodities do not sell at prices equal to the values. As described, if demand for A doubles, its price, measured in B, would double, despite no change in values. The consequence is that producers of B switch to production of A. So, over time, supply of A rises, and its price falls back towards its value, whilst the supply of B falls, and its price rises. But, in Capital III, Marx also explains that, with capitalist production, the capitalist is interested only in maximising their annual rate of profit, which is the basis of them being able to maximise their accumulation of capital.

Two capitals of equal size might produce different amounts of profit, because of their different composition. Because it is only labour that produces new value and surplus value, those capitals that employ proportionately more labour will produce more surplus value. For example,

I

c 800 + v 200 + s 200 = 1200, r` = 20%

II

c 200 + v 800 + s 800 = 1800, r` = 80%

So, both capitals are of 1000, but the second produces profit of 800, and a rate of profit of 80%, compared to profit of 200, and rate of profit of 20% in the former. The capitalists in the former would then move capital to the latter, and as supply in the former fell, so the price of its commodity would rise above its value. As capital moved into the latter, its supply would rise, and so its price would fall below its value. A stable situation arises only when prices in each sector are equal to 1500, at which point the amount of profit, in each is equal to 500, and the rate of profit is 50%.

As Marx describes, in Capital III, and Theories of Surplus Value, this is not the only factor, because the rate of turnover of capital has to also be taken into consideration, when calculating the annual rate of profit. In short, in spheres where the circulating capital turns over more quickly, the annual rate of profit will be higher, and rate of profit/profit margin lower, and vice versa.

But, again, values are not the same as exchange-values, or prices. Values are absolute, as measured by labour-time, whereas exchange-values are relative, as measured by the proportional relation between different values, i.e. the value of A relative to the value of B. The value of A may rise from 10 hours to 20 hours, for example, but if the value of B rises from 10 to 20 hours, there is no change in their exchange-value. Before and after, 1 unit of A exchanges for 1 unit of B.

Price is only a specific form of exchange value. It is the value of each commodity measured in terms of a quantity of one specific commodity – the money commodity – be it cattle, salt, copper, silver or gold. A quantity of this money commodity, say, a ¼ ounce of gold, becomes the standard of price, and is given a name, such as £1. over time, Marx explains, in A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy, this name of the standard of prices remains the same, but the quantity of gold it actually represents is continually reduced. Consequently, because the name £1 remains constant, the prices of commodities, measured in those £'s, rise, even though the value of the commodities fall. This is the basis of inflation.

“Now, the same general laws that regulate the price of commodities in general of course also regulate wages, the price of labour.” (p 26)

That is wages, as the price of the commodity labour-power, are determined primarily by the cost of production of labour-power. Secondly, however, that price will vary according to the state of demand and supply for that commodity. When demand for labour-power is high, wages will rise, and vice versa. However, there is a difference between this commodity and all others, when it comes to capitalist production.

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 5 of 19

Marx and Engels, and even Lenin and Trotsky could never have visualised the situation that exists, today. Indeed, in Anti-Duhring, Marx and Engels, noting this huge expansion of socialised capital, its requirement for state planning and regulation, and so on, at the same time that the capitalist class was reduced to a class of money-lenders, with no social function, naturally assumed that the working-class, leading the rest of society, would simply sweep them away, much as the bourgeoisie had swept away the landed aristocracy as its social function disappeared.

“In the trusts, free competition changes into monopoly and the planless production of capitalist society capitulates before the planned production of the invading socialist society. Of course, this is initially still to the benefit of the Capitalists.

But, the exploitation becomes so palpable here that it must break down. No nation would put up with production directed by trusts, with such a barefaced exploitation of the community by a small band of coupon-clippers.”

(Anti-Duhring, p 358)

Unfortunately, every nation has put up with such barefaced exploitation, and worse. On the one hand, conservative social-democracy has rationalised such barefaced exploitation, by presenting the whole of society as, also, taking part in it. Even though the vast majority of fictitious-capital is owned by a tiny minority, and control of all of it, by that minority, is exercised via the banks and finance houses, it is presented as though we are all equally owners of it, via pension funds, mutual funds and so on. But, the state most certainly would not even countenance workers exercising control over the funds in their pension funds, for example, let alone, changing the law to prevent shareholders exercising control over capital they do not own, and vesting that democratic control with the associated producers that collectively do own that capital. Yet, in terms of consistent industrial democracy, this need for control by workers over their collective property is as glaring and necessary as was the demand for political democracy advanced by the Chartists, in the 19th century, or in the Revolutions of 1848.

If conservative social-democrats, as with Attlee, Wilson, and Heath in Britain, or their equivalents in Europe and North America, nationalise capital, they do so not for the benefit of workers, or to enable those workers to exercise their rightful control over their collective property, but purely for the benefit of capital as a whole. The nationalisation of Rolls Royce by Heath, and of the banks, in 2008, is an example. Yet, this state-capitalism, undertaken by even conservative social-democracy (as now, with Starmer's commitment to rail renationalisation) is pretty much the zenith of the aspirations of the progressive social-democrats, but also of most of the so called Left, which masquerades in the clothing of Marxism. The Militant Tendency, for example, was well known, and ridiculed, for its “socialist” agenda, of calling for the nationalisation of the 200 top monopolies, but all of these Left sects, call, at one time or another, for the capitalist state to nationalise this or that industry or enterprise, as though the capitalist state would ever do that in workers' interests, rather than the interests of capital.

But, worse than that. Rather than seeing this large-scale socialised capital as progressive, in the way that Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky did, not only the progressive social democrats, but nearly all of the so called Left see it as the main object of their ire, as they have collapsed into the same kind of economic romanticism, and petty-bourgeois socialism of the kind of Sismondi, criticised by Marx and his followers. It is the basis of their “anti-capitalism”, expressed in calls for it to be hit by higher taxes than small business, and so on. Yet, if workers did have control of that capital, or, as with say a very large workers' cooperative, why on Earth would socialists want that to be more heavily taxed by the capitalist state, syphoning resources from it???

Rather than a struggle for consistent democracy, which, today, involves a demand for industrial democracy alongside a defence of political democracy, the Left, instead, looks to the capitalist state to fight its battles, to nationalise these companies, in the hope, or rather sowing the delusion, that, in doing so, “social control” over that capital is, then, somehow facilitated. Yet, everything we know, shows that no such social control is established, far less workers' control, and that, absent any such control, these state-capitalist enterprises become bureaucratic monstrosities, inefficient and run for the benefit of their higher echelons, and leached off by other, large companies. As with the various British nationalised industries, their inefficiency, poor quality of service, hierarchical and oppressive structure and inevitable failure (as was also the history of Stalinism), simply undermine the idea of socialism, and create the conditions for their future privatisation, and strengthening of the ideas of the superiority of the market.

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The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 5 of 10

It is vital to understand this when considering the way Trotsky's “Learn To Think” is wholly distorted, by social-imperialists, in order to turn him from being a revolutionary, international socialist, into being a liberal-bourgeois-nationalist, and proponent not of revolutionary-defeatism, but of “defence of the fatherland”. Trotsky never argued in favour of the support for the intervention of imperialism into such struggles. On the contrary, in his writings on the Balkan Wars, he sets out why Marxists have to militantly oppose such intervention.

“This means that European democracy has to combat every attempt to subject the fate of the Balkans to the ambitions of the Great Powers. Whether these ambitions be presented in the naked form of colonial policy or whether they be concealed behind phrases about racial kinship, they all alike menace the independence of the Balkan peoples. The Great Powers should be allowed to seek places for themselves in the Balkan Peninsula in one way only, that of free commercial rivalry and cultural influence...

Democracy has no right, political or moral, to entrust the organisation of the Balkan peoples to forces that are outside its control – for it is not known when and where these forces will stop, and democracy, having once granted them the mandate of its political confidence, will be unable to check them...

Therefore an uncompromising protest against atrocities serves not only the purpose of moral self-defence on the personal and party level but also the purpose of politically safeguarding the people against adventurism concealed under the flag of ‘liberation’.”

(The Balkan Wars)

But, also, Trotsky's argument, as set out in “Learn To Think”, about a revolutionary, national liberation struggle, is that set out in The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, and which he reiterated against the Stalinists, in relation to China. That is that we only give support to those truly, independent, revolutionary proletarian forces engaged in such a struggle. We make a point of unmasking any other forces that seek to adopt such communist camouflage.

In other words, he took it for granted that, in saying that the Italian workers would ensure that weapons got to Algerian rebels, those rebels were, themselves, such truly independent, proletarian forces, organised by an Algerian communist party, to fight not only French imperialism, but also the Algerian bourgeois-democracy! Its why, the Theses speak not only of supporting only such revolutionary forces, but also, as Trotsky emphasises against the Stalinists and Mensheviks, the need to oppose and expose the bourgeois-democratic, and social-democratic, let alone reactionary petty-bourgeois nationalist elements that try to pass themselves off as communist.

Bolshevism, and permanent revolution means its possible for the revolutionaries to make temporary, practical alliances, in action, with those other forces, but it certainly does not require them to do so, and even less, to subordinate themselves to those forces, or make permanent alliances with them. Trotsky would never, and did never, call for imperialist governments to provide weapons to those bourgeois forces, engaged in such a struggle, just as he did not call on the USSR to arm the KMT, precisely because of permanent revolution, and the lessons set out back in 1850, by Marx, following the experience of the revolutions of 1848. Marx pointed out the need to arm, not the bourgeois forces, engaged in such struggles, but to arm the revolutionary workers, precisely so that they could defend themselves against that bourgeoisie when it inevitably turned on them.

In Spain, in the 1930's, Trotsky pointed to the hypocrisy of the so called “democratic imperialists”, and bankruptcy of the centrists and reformists in the Popular Front government of France, etc., as they adopted a neutral stance between the Republican government and Franco, when it came to supplying arms, but Trotsky, also, never called on those governments to arm the Republican government either. Why would he? It was a bourgeois government, which, whilst opposing Franco, was also attacking the Spanish workers, on behalf of the Spanish bourgeoisie, just as Zelensky's government does in Ukraine.

As Orwell pointed out, that Republican government, in so far as it had modern weapons, kept them to itself, rather than giving them to the workers actually fighting Franco's forces.

“[The infantry were far worse armed than an English public school Officers' Training Corps with worn out Mauser rifles which usually jammed after five shots; approximately one machine gun to fifty men; and one pistol or revolver to about thirty men. These weapons so necessary in trench warfare were not issued by the government and could be bought only illegally and with the greatest difficulty...

A government which sends boys of fifteen to the front with rifles forty years old, and keeps its biggest men and newest weapons in the rear, is manifestly more afraid of the revolution than of the fascists.”

(George Orwell, Controversy, August 1937)

The same is true, in Ukraine, despite the fantasies peddled by Western social-imperialists, about the war being fought by “ordinary Ukrainians”, whatever that means, as against the reality of a war fought between two capitalist (imperialist) states, and their armies, backed by huge imperialist alliances.

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 4 of 19

In fact, as Marx and Engels describe, for example in Anti-Duhring, the contradictions had already reached another breaking point. The main form of socialised capital, i.e. the joint stock company/corporation, the collective property of the workers, or associated producers, as Marx calls them, is not controlled by those workers, but by shareholders, i.e. not by the owners of that capital, but by the owners of fictitious-capital, whose interests are immediately antagonistic to it. For much of the 20th century, this contradiction was contained. The owners of fictitious-capital, sought to maximise their revenues from the money-capital they loaned. Ultimately, that required that profits be used to accumulate capital, not to endlessly increase the proportion of those profits paid out as interest/dividends.

If the socialised capital was controlled by its collective owners, the associated producers, that would happen, as profits were retained and invested in additional capital. The lenders of money-capital (owners of fictitious capital) would increasingly become redundant, as a parasitic excrescence, and competition between them to lend money, would force interest rates down. However, the socialised capital was not controlled by its owners, but by shareholders, and, consequently, the Boards of Directors they appointed served their interests, not those of the company. As interest rates fell, the shareholders compensated by simply having those Directors allocate a growing proportion of profits to be paid as dividends, rather than retained for investment. As Haldane has noted, in the 1970's, only 10%, on average, of profits went to pay dividends, whereas, today, it is around 70%. (There has been a similar rise in the proportion of building costs accounted for by land prices from 10%, after WWII, to around 70%, today).

The consequence was that share prices rose inexorably, and as share prices rose, so too all other asset prices rose. The owners of fictitious-capital were no longer primarily concerned with revenue/interest/rent, but with perennial capital gains, resulting from these ever inflating asset prices. But, without expanding capital, there are limits to the expansion of profits, and without expanding profits there is no sustainable basis for an expansion of dividends/interest, rent or taxes. Consequently, there is no basis for a continued rise in asset prices, and when they stop rising, they fall. A financial crash happens, as with 1987, 2000, and 2008, and other smaller crashes in between. Only inflation, i.e. a devaluation of the standard of prices can create the illusion of continued rising asset prices, which is what QE did.

But, the ruling class is a global class of owners of this fictitious-capital – which is why, in the end, its interests conflict with those of nation states, currently trying to reverse the process of globalisation, represented by Brexit, Biden's Inflation Reduction Act, and so on, which represent the agenda of the reactionary, nationalist petty-bourgeoisie. The capitalist state remains the state of the ruling-class, but the immediate interests of this ruling-class, not to see their wealth decimated, as asset prices crash, conflicts with the interests of the real industrial capital (objectively the collective property of workers), upon which that wealth is actually based! The social-democratic state, now, becomes the arena in which this struggle between two antagonistic forms of capitalist property (real socialised industrial capital and fictitious capital) is played out.

Ultimately, the state must represent the long-term, as against the short-term, interests of the ruling class, and that involves it representing the interests of the real industrial capital, and its need to accumulate (objectively, that also means the interests of the collective owners of that capital, i.e. the working-class, indicating, as Marx sets out in Capital III, Chapter 27, the transitional nature of this form of property). That need, in the age of imperialism, of monopoly capitalism, involves its requirement for planning and regulation, and standardisation, on an ever wider basis. Logically, the creation of a single global market and state, but which the limitations of imperialism, and continuance of nation states, frustrates. Gravity pulls matter together in the universe, but it takes the form of separated clumps of matter, in the process.

Hence the development of the EU, and other such structures, as well as attempts to create global para state bodies such as WTO, World Bank, IMF and so on, and hence, also, the dynamic driving imperialism in Israel, and the Middle East, as well as in Ukraine, Taiwan and elsewhere. These kinds of development, of creating larger single markets, and of which the process of globalisation was an inherent component, are compatible with the needs of both real industrial capital, and fictitious-capital. They reduce costs, and frictions, thereby, facilitating increased realised profits, and rates of profit, without additional capital accumulation, without profits being used for that purpose rather than being handed to shareholders. But, they are limited, and not only have those limits been temporarily reached, but, also, other factors have put them into reverse. The most obvious manifestation is Brexit.

It is the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie, politically ascendant since the 1980's, manifest in its take over of conservative parties, and movement to the Right of the Overton Window, that conflicts with that process of globalisation. It is manifest in the fact that, not only has that petty-bourgeoisie, whose strength resides in its numbers, taken over conservative parties, but as a result of its electoral weight, has also shifted the nature of the existing workers' parties, such as Labour, Democrats, SPD etc. Those parties, which were, formerly, characterised as bourgeois workers' parties, i.e. parties based upon the working-class, but dominated by bourgeois ideas, have, become petty-bourgeois workers parties, most noticeable in the collapse of Starmer's Blue Labour into jingoism, and Brexitism, as it seeks to accommodate the interests of the reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, in search of its votes.

Real industrial capital requires not only a resumption of that process of creating larger single markets, but, also, requires that profits be used for capital accumulation, not ever rising amounts of dividends, share buybacks, rents, taxes and so on. The operation of the long-wave cycle has itself imposed that necessity on it, even though the ruling class has utilised the state to try to subvert it, and mitigate it, so as to avoid crashes in asset prices. As with the period of the early 1960's, we have entered a phase of the long wave cycle in which the productivity gains, resulting from the microchip revolution of the 1970's/80's, have now dissipated. Employment has risen, and started to use up the relative surplus population created in the 1980's/90's. It means that wages also begin to rise, a process that was only slowed as a result of the austerity measures introduced after 2010, alongside the continued attempts to inflate asset prices, and divert money from the real economy, into such speculation, by utilising QE.

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Wage-labour and Capital, Section II - Part 4 of 6

The argument that inflation – a rise in the general level of prices – is a result of aggregate demand exceeding aggregate supply, or what is the same thing, a result of cost-push, or demand-pull, is false, because the rise in the price of some commodities means a corresponding fall in the price of other commodities, relative to it. There can only be a rise in the price of all commodities if it is relative to the one commodity – the money commodity – which acts as the indirect measure of their value.

In other words, the value of money must fall, for there to be inflation. As I have set out, elsewhere, in the era of fiat currencies that act as the standard of price, the basis of this devaluation of the currency/standard of price, is it being thrown into circulation in excess quantities, as seen with QE, helicopter money during lockdowns, and liquidity injections over the last 40 years.

So, if supply is a function of value, and the price of the commodity is its cost of production plus profit, what, then, determines the amount of this profit? The answer lies in two definitions of cost of production, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value. Basically, there is cost of production for society, and cost of production for the capitalist. These two costs of production can be measured in labour-time.

This was described earlier. If we take the production of yarn, it comprises the value of cotton, the wear and tear of machinery and so on. All of this value is equal to a given amount of labour-time, required for the production of these inputs. Let us say it is equal to 100 hours of labour. But, then, to produce 100 kilos of yarn, workers must set in motion the machines, and process the cotton. Let us say that this requires a further 100 hours of labour. So, now, the cost of production, to society, of 100 kilos of yarn, is, in total, 200 hours of labour. The unit value of a kilo of yarn is 2 hours of labour. This determines its exchange-value/price, relative to other commodities.

However, what is the cost of production to the capitalist? They have advanced the equivalent of 100 hours of labour for the purchase of cotton, and to cover the wear and tear of machinery, buildings etc., but they do not advance the equivalent of 100 hours of labour as wages. They only advance, as wages, an amount equal to the value of labour-power, i.e. sufficient to reproduce that labour-power. This is, again, a function of value, because the workers require a given physical quantity of use values – food, clothing, shelter, education and so on – to reproduce their labour-power, and all of these commodities have their own value.

What the capitalist pays for, then, is 100 hours for constant capital (cotton, wear and tear) plus, say, 50 hours for wages, the equivalent of the value of labour-power, consumed. This is their cost of production, which is 50 hours less than the cost of production to society, and the value at which they sell the yarn. The difference of 50 hours labour constitutes, for them, but not society, a surplus value, a something for nothing, which makes up their profit. Of course, the capitalists and their economists see, also, this profit as a cost of production, a cost that must be covered to get the capitalist to advance their capital.

So, the cost of production of a commodity, to society, i.e. the total labour-time required to produce it, determines its value, whilst the difference between that and the cost of production to the capitalist determines the amount of profit. Where commodities sell at prices equal to their values, this profit will be equal to the surplus value produced, i.e. the difference between the new value created by labour, in the production of the commodity, and the value of the labour-power/wages consumed in that production. Taking all commodities in total, it will also equal the surplus value.

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Bourgeois Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 3 of 19

The line that it was okay to criticise the actions of Israeli governments was always a lie, as every such criticism led to the same claims of them really being a cover for anti-Semitism, but if its not possible to criticise the actions of the Zionist state, a Bonapartist state, headed by Netanyahu, but governed by its Zionist ideology, as it visibly and undeniably commits genocide in Gaza and, increasingly the West Bank, when would such criticism be valid, and not characterised as “anti-Semitic”?! 

The contradictions have fully matured, and erupt violently, as appearance and reality collide. It has been erupting on the streets of the world's major cities, every weekend for months, and, now, it is erupting on college campuses in the US, Australia and elsewhere, reminiscent of the student protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960's. For regular readers of this blog, that should come as no surprise, as it is what has been analysed for years, on the basis that we are in an equivalent phase of the long wave cycle as that of the early 1960's.

Bourgeois-democracy is a sham, and a fraud. It was most easily seen to be so, in the early 19th century, when it took the form of liberal-democracy that only gave the vote to the owners of property. That led to an inevitable demand for a widening of the franchise by workers, and other sections of the masses, the petty-bourgeoisie and peasantry. The means of engaging in the struggle for the extension of those bourgeois-democratic rights, by workers, however, were inevitably proletarian, not bourgeois.

The Chartists, in Britain, for example, pursued their aims by the organisation of General Strikes, and mass mobilisations, and, for some, the mobilisation of independent, proletarian, armed struggle. It was precisely those methods that Marx and Engels advocated, as they warned the workers against being suckered in by the claims of their erstwhile allies amongst the bourgeoisie and petty-bourgeoisie. It was the same approach taken by the Bolsheviks, in 1905 and 1917, when, in pursuit of the demand for a bourgeois-democratic, republic and convening of a Constituent Assembly, they argued for the creation of soviets/workers' councils, as independent organs of workers self-government.

But, capitalism, as it entered its imperialist stage, towards the end of the 19th century, dominated by large-scale, socialised, industrial capital, was not only able to accommodate the demands of workers for higher real wages, as productivity rose sharply, but it actively encouraged it. It needed ever larger markets, and workers formed the largest section of society. Moreover, these higher real wages helped to reinforce the idea, promoted by social-democracy, that labour and capital had the same common interests that could be advanced, more or less harmoniously, given the occasional falling out, and need for diplomacy and compromise, mediated by a growing, social-democratic, professional middle-class, whose job was to manage such relations, on behalf of the good of “society”.

Liberal bourgeois democracy, had become a fetter on the free and rational development of bourgeois-democracy, just as the monopoly of private capital had become a fetter on the rational development of capital itself. The latter fetter was “burst asunder”, as Marx puts it, in Capital I, by the development of socialised capital in the form of the cooperatives, and more extensively in the form of the joint stock companies/corporations. Alongside this development, liberal democracy gave way to social-democracy, based upon the delusion of universal suffrage, and the idea that power resides in elected parliaments, rather than in the hands of the permanent state, its civil service, bodies of armed men, judiciary, and its ideological apparatus operating through the schools and universities, the media, and religious and cultural organisations.

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Northern Soul Classics - Thank You Baby - Soul Brothers Six

 

Friday Night Disco - You're The First, The Last, My Everything - Barry White

 

The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 4 of 10

In China, neither imperialism nor the Chinese capitalist state was defending workers' interests. Imperialism was clearly tied to the Chinese militarists, as well as having its own bodies of armed men, in the country, to oppress the workers, and to defend its own interest. As Trotsky points out, the KMT was the party of the bourgeoisie, which, itself, was intimately tied to imperialism. The KMT's claim to be “anti-imperialist” was bogus, because of that, and amounted only to playing off one imperialist power against another. Trotsky made the same point about Ukraine, where, again, different sections of society looked to different imperialists to further their specific interests.

“Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score...

The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”

(Problem of the Ukraine)

The same is true in Ukraine, today, with the Ukrainian capitalist state oppressing Ukrainian workers in the interests of the Ukrainian oligarchs, who are intimately tied to US and Western imperialism. The claims of Zelensky's corrupt capitalist government, as with the claims of the KMT, to be “anti-imperialist”, as it opposes Putin's invasion, is wholly bogus for the reasons Trotsky described, in relation to China and Ukraine, in the 1930's. He made exactly the same analysis in relation to Czechoslovakia.

“Even irrespective of its international ties Czechoslovakia constitutes a thoroughly imperialist state. Economically, monopoly capitalism reigns there. Politically, the Czech bourgeoisie dominates (perhaps soon we will have to say, dominated!) several oppressed nationalities. Such a war, even on the part of isolated Czechoslovakia would thus have been carried on not for national independence but for the maintenance and if possible the extension of the borders of imperialist exploitation.”

Those examples, as with the position of the social-patriots and social-imperialists, today, in relation to Ukraine, are simply a repetition of the deception carried out by them, in WWI, as described by Lenin in the Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, in which they dress up defence of the fatherland in the clothes of national independence and national self-determination. The most blatant example of that is the defence of Zionist imperialism, in Israel/Palestine, on grounds of a bourgeois-defencist position of “a right of self-defence” for capitalist states.

“Recognition of internationalism in word, and its replacement in deed by petty-bourgeois nationalism and pacifism, in all propaganda, agitation and practical work, is very common, not only among the parties of the Second International, but also among those which have withdrawn from it, and often even among parties which now call themselves communist...

The age-old oppression of colonial and weak nationalities by the imperialist powers has not only filled the working masses of the oppressed countries with animosity towards the oppressor nations, but has also aroused distrust in these nations in general, even in their proletariat. The despicable betrayal of socialism by the majority of the official leaders of this proletariat in 1914-19, when “defence of country” was used as a social-chauvinist cloak to conceal the defence of the “right” of their “own” bourgeoisie to oppress colonies and fleece financially dependent countries, was certain to enhance this perfectly legitimate distrust.”

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Bourgeois-Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 2 of 19

The chaos caused in Libya spread into Mali and other parts of North Africa, and, again, it has opened the door for rivals to fill the void, most notably the role of the Russian Wagner Group, as China, also, continues to expand its economic reach. Similarly, US imperialism promotes the Zionist genocide against the Palestinians, because, much as with Sherman's genocide against the Native Americans, and the European Colonialists' genocides against indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere, it is necessary to establish its unchallenged position, as a Zionist state “from the river to the sea”, as its doctrine commits it, and as the laws of capital, in the age of imperialism requires it to do. Only then can it begin to create that wider politico-economic bloc with the other US clients in Egypt, Jordan and the Gulf states, free from the repeated rebellions of the Palestinians, and the support for them amongst the Arab masses that obstructs the actions of their rulers.

Such a development is also in the interests of EU imperialism. Indeed, it is more so than for US imperialism, in the longer run, because a stabilisation of the region, and its economic growth, will mean far greater trade, and investment opportunities for EU imperialism, as its closer neighbour. So, it is no wonder that the political representatives of US, UK and EU “democratic imperialism” have been prepared to move heaven and earth to support the genocide undertaken by Zionism in Palestine, and to claim that black is white, as they try to deny it is happening. For years, they have equated anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, a strategy used even more intensively and fraudulently, in recent years, as they sought to attack the Left, for example, against Corbyn and his supporters.

In the 1930's, when that same “democratic imperialism” was seeking to dupe the masses into support for its imperialist wars against Germany and Japan, it did so by claiming that it was engaged in a war for “democracy”, all the while holding millions of colonial slaves in chains! As Trotsky noted,

"Three hundred fifty million Indians must reconcile themselves to their slavery in order to support British democracy, the rulers of which at this very time, together with the slaveholders of “democratic” France, are delivering the Spanish people into Franco’s bondage. People of Latin America must tolerate with gratitude the foot of Anglo-Saxon imperialism on their neck only because this foot is dressed in a suede democratic boot. Disgrace, shame, cynicism – without end!"

(Phrases and Reality)

It does so, today, aided not only by the likes of imperialist politicians such as Biden and Starmer, but also, of social-imperialists of the type of the USC, and its components such as the AWL, who play the same role, today, in that regard, as did the Stalinists and centrists in the 1930's. They have been complicit in this narrative of imperialism, including in its use of anti-Semitism witch hunts in the labour movement. But, to do that, they also had to claim that it was okay to criticise the actions of Israeli governments, even though, in practice, nearly every such criticism was met with the same charges of anti-Semitism.

The line that it was okay to criticise Israeli governments, rather than the racist, colonialist ideology of Zionism, which underpins that state, was also meant to enable imperialism to pressure those Zionist governments, such as that of Netanyahu, which were seen as too maverick, uncontrollable, and representing the same kind of petty-bourgeois interests as those of Trump, Truss, and so on. It is the same motivation that leads to liberal Zionist newspapers such as Ha'aretz, to stand against Netanyahu, and to ridiculously claim that he has failed in his aims in Gaza. He has failed their aims, not his, and not the rationale of Zionism, as now manifest, in its requirement for a final solution against the Palestinians.

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Wage-labour and Capital, Section II - Part 3 of 6

The determining factor of supply is value. If the producer can sell their commodity at a value that is greater than the value of the commodities consumed in its production, i.e. make a profit, they will engage in production. Of course, if they can make a higher rate of profit by engaging in some other production, they will move their capital to that sphere, and so, as described above, this will bring about changes in supply, prices and profits, in these different spheres. As Marx sets out in Capital III, this is why The Law of The Tendency for the Rate of Profit To Fall, in spheres where the organic composition of capital is higher, or rate of turnover of capital is lower, is a most important law for capitalism, both in determining prices of production, and the allocation of capital.

It is this, not the preferences of the consumer, that is the determinant of value/price. The consumer may, of course, decide that they do not obtain use-value/utility from any given commodity, at its market value, and so withdraw their demand for it. So be it. In that case, supply would contract also, may be even to zero! As Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20, and in The Grundrisse, demand is a function of use-value/utility. But, just because consumers decide they are only prepared to pay £0.50 for commodity A, rather than £1 that does not mean that the price of commodity A will fall to £0.50. It means demand would collapse, but, if no producers of A could produce it, and make average profit, at £0.50, supply would also disappear.

Marx, also, deals, here, with the false arguments of orthodox economics in relation to inflation. If we take the most basic condition of an economy, with just two commodities, A and B, both with a value of 10 hours per unit, then 1 unit of A will exchange for 1 unit of B. Put another way, the price of 1 unit of A is 1 unit of B. But, now, suppose demand for A doubles, but cannot be increased to meet this demand? As Marx described earlier, owners of B, who are buyers of A will increase competition between themselves to buy the available supplies of A. The same would be true if the supply of A fell.

As a result of this, the B price of A would rise, even though the value of A and B remains unchanged. The price of A might rise to 2B. But that is just another way of saying that the A price of B has fallen! Previously, the A price of 1 unit of B, was 1 unit, but, now, is just 0.5 units of A. The sum of all prices, therefore, remains the same. The price of A has doubled, the price of B halving, cancelling each other out.

“If the price of a commodity rises considerably because of inadequate supply or disproportionate increase of demand, the price of some other commodity must necessarily have fallen proportionately; for the price of a commodity only expresses in money the ratio in which other commodities are given in exchange for it. If, for example, the price of a yard of silk material rises from five marks to six marks, the price of silver in relation to the silk material has fallen, and likewise the prices of all other commodities that have remained at their old prices have fallen in relation to the silk.” (p 24)

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Bourgeois Democracy Crumbles As It Defends Its Genocide - Part 1 of 19

Bourgeois-democracy is a sham, a fraud, a means of deluding the masses into believing that they have a real say in the running of society, when, in fact, irrespective of what colour rosette the governing parties wear, the actual control of society rests with the owners of property, and their state. Whenever the superficial rights and freedoms promised by bourgeois-democracy are actually used by the masses to promote their own interests, or to challenge the actions of the state, the ruling class, and its state, simply abandons even the pretext; it removes the velvet glove and exposes the iron first of its class dictatorship. Across the world, as “democratic-imperialism”, seeks to justify and defend its genocide in Gaza, in the face of popular revolt, bourgeois-democracy is crumbling, as it exposes that iron first. And, contrary to the bleating of subjectivists, such as Paul Mason, over the last few years, it is not the fascists of the type of Trump, Johnson, Le Pen, Wilders, or the AfD that are the instrument of that iron first, but those that Mason has looked to within the ranks of social-democracy, such as Biden, Starmer, Scholz, Macron et al, Bonapartists themselves, one and all.

I recently, noted the video from Owen Jones, detailing the arrest of a Jewish activist in Germany, on the grounds of “anti-Semitism”, for having taken part in opposing the Zionist genocide, as well as noting the arrest by British police of a Rabbi, on the same basis. It rather frames the context of the actions of Gideon Falter, and his claims in relation to the actions of police. It also, highlights the extent to which the contradictions inherent within bourgeois-democracy, and its attempts to defend the actions of “democratic imperialism”, in carrying out, and complicity in genocide, have reached the stage in which they must violently explode in crisis. As Owen Jones says, what more repulsive sight can there be than that of German state stormtroopers arresting German Jews, and claiming to be doing so on the grounds of anti-Semitism, whilst, in fact, what they are doing is defending the role of the German state, in once more being involved in a genocide?

Now, Owen Jones, in another video, featuring Yanis Varoufakis, banned by that same German state, details the crumbling of bourgeois-democracy in Germany.

 

For months, the genocide undertaken by the Zionist state against Palestinians has been undeniable, and has provoked ever greater popular protests against it. That genocide is backed to the hilt by “democratic imperialism”, that arms it, propagandises for it, and in the words of the likes of Biden, Starmer and co., stands “shoulder to shoulder” with it. Why does this “democratic imperialism” stand shoulder to shoulder with Zionism, and its genocide? Because the Zionist state, in Israel, is its tool, its proxy in the region, just as Zelensky and his regime in Ukraine, and the inheritors of Chiang Kai Shek's butchers in Taiwan, are its proxy, its foot soldiers in various parts of the world, where it has global strategic interests, and increasingly so, now, as it faces a challenge to its global hegemony, from an up and coming imperialist bloc, led by China and Russia.

The US imperialist strategy in the Middle-East, involves a regional, politico-economic bloc bringing together Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the Gulf States. Prior to the Iraq War, and NATO's wars in Libya and Syria, which utilised Islamist groups against the existing regimes, funded and armed by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, the economic development of those states was enabling them to be drawn closer to the EU, in a similar manner to that of the former Stalinist states in Central Europe, prior to them joining the EU. That, in itself, was seen as a threat by US imperialism, as EU imperialism remains the most powerful potential rival to the US, despite its continued subservience to it, as both try to defend their current dominance against the rising imperialist bloc led by China.

The chaos caused by US imperialism in the Middle-East and North Africa by its wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria, ended that process of economic and social development, and also ended the process of closer integration with the EU, strengthening US imperialism against EU imperialism, and emphasising its continued dominance over it. But, European imperialism, older and wiser than US imperialism, knows that such developments as those now sought by US imperialism, have other consequences, in the longer term. US imperialism's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, cost it large amounts of treasure, and achieved its aim of removing the existing regimes, creating chaos, and so removing a potential regional power, but, in Afghanistan, China is the one, now, stepping in to offer the potential of trade and investment, furthering its own global imperialist ambitions, and influence. In Iraq, it is Iran, against whom US imperialism initially promoted Saddam Hussein as their proxy, that has gained most influence, strengthening its own sub-imperialist power, as an ally of China and Russia.

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The Chinese Revolution After The Sixth Congress, 5. Appendix – A Remarkable Document - Part 3 of 10

Marx's analysis does not say that the peasantry/petty-bourgeoisie cannot carry through revolutions, particularly where its solidified under a Bonapartist leader, or military junta. It says it cannot form the ruling class. Having carried through such a revolution/Peasant War, the state must represent the interests of capital or labour, must become some form of capitalist or workers' state, albeit with whatever deformations.

Alternatively, if, as with Pol Pot, in Cambodia, the aftermath of NATO intervention in Libya in 2011, or as with the Taliban in Afghanistan, prior to 2001, and after 2021, it tries to turn the clock back from capitalist development, to some form of agrarian society, or small commodity producing economy, everything that goes with it is restored such as landlordism, warlordism and so on, the disintegration of the nation state, leading to a failed state and collapse.

China, too, was in danger of suffering that fate, under Mao and the Cultural Revolution, and Great Leap Forward, which cost the lives of millions from starvation, until it was reversed, but, at which point, the course was set by the state to represent the interests of capital, symbolised in the policies of Deng Xiaoping.

“Let us recall that immediately after the May Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, which entrusted the leadership of the agrarian revolution to the Left Guomindang, the latter began to exterminate the workers and peasants. The position of the ECCI became completely untenable. At all costs, there had to be, and that without delay, “left” actions in China to refute the “calumny” of the Opposition, that is, its irreproachable prognosis. That is why the Chinese Central Committee, which found itself between the hammer and the anvil, was obliged, in August 1927, to turn the proletarian policy topsy-turvy all over again.” (p 212-3)

The revolution, to be progressive, could only be one led by a revolutionary, industrial proletariat, drawing the poor peasants and urban petty-bourgeois behind it. That was what the Bolsheviks did in 1917, and why The Theses On The National and Colonial Questions, as cited by Trotsky, emphasises that its only those revolutionary forces, organised, not only to fight against landlordism, imperialism etc., but also against their own bourgeois-democracy that can be supported. Its why Marxists should not support the guerrilla wars of, say, the Viet Cong, the ANC, FARC, PIRA, and so on, even if we would, simultaneously, oppose the old landlord/feudal regime, imperialism and so on. Opposing one does not at all imply supporting the other, on the basis of some kind of moralistic lesser-evilism, or “my enemy's enemy is my friend”, campism, as Trotsky explains in “Learn To Think". We are not bourgeois democrats, nor nationalists, our goal is international socialism not bourgeois nationalism.

Indeed, for that reason, even less can we accept the idea that imperialism defends the interests of workers or oppressed peoples, as social-imperialists like the AWL, and the USC would have us believe! As Trotsky points out in Lenin and Imperialist War.

“If revolutionary and progressive movements beyond the boundaries of ones own country could be supported by supporting ones own imperialist bourgeoisie then the policy of social patriotism was in principle correct. There was no reason, then, for the founding of the Third International.”

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Wage-labour and Capital, Section II - Part 2 of 6

“Let us suppose that there are 100 bales of cotton on the market and at the same time purchasers for 1,000 bales of cotton. In this case, therefore, the demand is 10 times as great as the supply. Competition will be very strong among the buyers, each of whom desires to get one, and if possible, all of the whole hundred bales for himself. This example is no arbitrary assumption. We have experienced periods of cotton crop failure, in the history of the trade, when a few capitalists in alliance have tried to buy not one hundred bales, but all the cotton stocks of the world. Hence, In the example mentioned, one buyer will seek to drive the others from the field by offering a relatively higher price per bale of cotton. The cotton sellers, who perceive that the troops of the enemy army are engaged in the most violent struggle among themselves, and the same of all their hundred bales is absolutely certain, will take good care not to fall out among themselves and depress the price of cotton at the moment their adversaries are competing with one another to force it up. Thus, peace suddenly descends on the army of sellers. They stand facing the buyers as one man, fold their arms philosophically and there would be no bounds to their demands were it not that the offers of even the most persistent and eager buyers have very definite limits.” (p 23)

One limit has been mentioned, which is the effect on the rate of profit. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, Chapter 6, and elsewhere, the increase in the price of cotton affects the price of yarn, but does not change the amount of surplus value produced, in yarn production. So, the rate of profit would fall, meaning that capital could be better used elsewhere. In Chapter 6, the other limitation is also mentioned. That is that the resulting increase in the price of yarn would reduce demand for it, possibly to a level where production becomes unviable. Consumers of cotton yarn may switch to wool, or some other material, so that yarn producers would, therefore, switch to these other inputs.

“It is well known that the reverse case, with reverse result, occurs more frequently. Considerable surplus of supply over demand; desperate competition among the sellers, lack of buyers; disposal of goods at ridiculously low prices.” (p 23)

But, Marx notes that the terms high or low prices are themselves relative. High or low compared to what?

“And if the price is determined by the relation between supply and demand, what determines the relation of supply and demand? (p 23-4)

The same applies to profit. What determines that a given rate of profit is high or low? It requires some presumption of what is a normal rate of profit, in which case, what determines the normal profit? Why should it be, say, 20%, and not 10% or 30%? It is certainly the case, as Marx describes, in Capital III, that, if firms see that, in their current line of business, they can only make, on average, 10% profit, whereas, in some other line of business, the rate of profit, on average, is 30%, capital will, gradually, move to the latter, and away from the former. As a result, supply, in the latter will rise, prices and the rate of profit will fall, whilst supply, in the former, will fall, and prices and the rate of profit will rise.

This very process results in an average rate of profit, in this case, of 20%, and is the process by which prices of production are determined as cost of production plus average profit. But, this still does not explain why this average is 20%, rather than 10% or 30%. Orthodox economics would explain it by saying that firms take their cost of production and add a percentage of mark-up, as profit. This is, superficially, what does happen. The result is then the selling price. What they can add as mark-up, this subjectivist theory would argue, is determined by what consumers are themselves prepared to pay. In this subjectivist theory, prices, and consequently profits, are determined by demand, by what the consumer is prepared to pay. But, then, we are back to the original question of what determines what the consumer is prepared to pay? It does no good to say its whether the consumer thinks the price is high or low, because high or low compared to what?

And, if the consumer thinks the price of yarn is too high, and so refuses to buy yarn, this sudden glut of yarn would lead to yarn producers slashing prices to clear their stocks, but, what then? If the price that consumers think is reasonable is below the cost of production, yarn producers will simply stop producing yarn. They do not produce it for some altruistic reason, or to satisfy the needs of consumers, but, only, to make profit.

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Why US Military Aid To Ukraine Will Make No Real Change

The US, desperate to provide even more military aid to its proxy, the Zionist state in Israel, to continue its genocide against Palestinians, has also, now, voted through a package of military aid to Ukraine that reactionary Republicans had been holding up, as they sought to tie it to closing the US border with Mexico. The US is not going to do the latter, because, faced with growing labour shortages, as the economy continues on a tear, it needs millions of migrant workers to stop US wages rising at an even faster pace than they are, squeezing US profit margins, and causing interest rates to rise further. The aid, amounting to $61 billion, will make no real difference to the proxy war being fought out on Ukraine's soil.

The reason for that is quite simple.  It is, now, Ukraine that is put in the position of being on the offensive, against a well entrenched Russian military. To overcome such defence, Ukraine needs at least a 4:1 advantage, and simply does not have it. It does not have it in military equipment, including munitions, and more importantly, it does not have it in soldiers, especially as, now, young Ukrainian workers are seeing what the war is about, and large numbers are seeking to escape, as Zelensky's corrupt regime tries to draft more of them into its imperialist war, on behalf of US imperialism.

The reason that the additional aid will make no significant difference is because the whole narrative of the war, presented by NATO, and by Zelensky, from the start, was false. The narrative was that Russia intended to annex the whole of Ukraine, as a taster, before, attacking other former parts of the USSR, in the Baltics, Poland and so on. Such a narrative was insane to begin with, and that was shown by the contradictions that emerged within it, not long after the war began.

We were told that Putin was driven by some kind of, Hilteresque megalomania, to want to restore the old USSR. Itself, such subjectivist explanations for war, which Paul Mason has promoted, in recent years, are highly suspect, and explain nothing. Marxists know that wars are motivated by underlying material interests, in short, economic interests, not the whims of individuals. Hitler did not seek to conquer Europe, because he was a megalomaniac, but, because Europe needed a large, single European market, to compete with US imperialism, and German imperialism, as the most powerful in Europe, sought to bring it about under its domination. It was simply a continuation of that from WWI.

Putin's war in Ukraine is, similarly, not driven by some kind of megalomania, or ethnic imperative, but by an understandable concern not to allow NATO imperialism to continue to expand up to Russia's borders, and from where it would continue to chip away at the various Russian Republics, stirring up ethnic tensions, as, for example, the US did by supporting the KLA to incite ethnic violence against Kosovan Serbs, so as to, at least, keep Russia busy fighting these insurgencies, if not to see its territory continually broken apart. As a former KGB operative, Putin knew that Russia could not hope to invade and annex the whole of Ukraine. It would have required vast amounts of resources and military manpower, for little real long-term advantage. Even if it could be done, it would have been impossible to hold on to, and would have economically destroyed Russia. NATO, also, no doubt, understood this, despite their narrative that this was Putin's plan.

They may have hoped to have goaded Putin into it, just as Blairite, former NATO Secretary-General, George Robertson admits, they goaded him into the invasion itself. More likely, they simply needed that narrative to get Ukrainian citizens to buy the argument, and put their lives on the line, for a war they could never actually win, as well as to sell workers, in other NATO countries, on the idea of providing vast amounts of money to finance such a war, at a time when they were being told they had to accept austerity, and pay cuts!

The reality was that Putin never had any intention of trying to invade the whole of Ukraine, or trying to annex it, any more than NATO intended to invade and occupy the whole of Serbia in order to separate off Kosovo from it. In fact, it would have been far easier for NATO to have invaded the whole of Serbia and occupied it than it would for Russia to invade and occupy the whole of Ukraine.

Having established the narrative that Russia intended to invade and annex the whole of Ukraine, a narrative that many on the Left, including those, like Eddie Ford of the CPGB, that do not support NATO, also bought,  the failure of Russia to do so means that it can be presented as a defeat for Russia, and only a matter of time before its sent packing. But, Russia never mobilised anything like the military forces and materiel required to invade, let alone occupy long-term, the whole of Ukraine. It put less forces in the field than Ukraine had mobilised, whereas military doctrine required it to have at least four times as many! Russia clearly intended only to invade and annex Eastern Ukraine, where the ethnic Russians form a majority, and that is what it has done, just as, in 2014, it annexed majority Russian Crimea.

Yes, of course, Russia attacked Kyiv and so on, but, when NATO sought to annex Kosovo, it also attacked Belgrade. In modern war, its necessary to destroy, or at least seriously degrade, command and control systems, and these are often centred on the political and administrative centres, as well as other transport and communications systems, such as energy supplies, airports and so on. As I wrote at the time, Russia, in its invasion of Eastern Ukraine, adopted the NATO play-book used in Kosovo etc. When Russia rolled its tanks into South Ossetia, in 2008, to similarly put an end to ethnic cleansing and genocide by the NATO backed Georgian government, it also rolled its tanks into the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, as it destroyed Georgian command and control. NATO and Georgia said it was going to annex the whole of Georgia, and, indeed, it easily could have done so, by that point. But, it didn't, pulling its military back into South Ossetia, once those objectives had been met. It did a similar thing in Abkhazia.

Russia could never have invaded or annexed the whole of Ukraine, by contrast. It is a vast country, and provided with huge resources from NATO. NATO may, indeed, have wanted to try to goad it into trying, so as to ruin Russia, itself, but there was no chance of it doing so. On the contrary, Russia can simply sit back in its bulwarks, now established, in Eastern Ukraine, drawing the Ukrainians on to its guns, and cutting them down likes poppies in the field, to coin a phrase. Young Ukrainian workers are simply the meat in a meat grinder perpetuated by NATO, and their Zelensky puppet, to keep Russia busy, but the cost of that, for NATO, is that it is now sucked into another forever war that is costing it far more financially to continue the military supplies than it is costing Russia, as the defender of territory, and which, with its backing from China, it is well placed to continue to do.

NATO may have fallen for its own propaganda about Russia seeking to invade the whole of Ukraine, in which case, the additional military aid would make a difference, but, given that the propaganda was itself nonsense to begin with it won't. The fact that it was simply propaganda can be seen from the contradiction inherent within it. On the one hand, it said, “Russia intends to invade the whole of Ukraine.” However, keen to emphasise its failure, and the supposed weakness of Putin, it pointed to the retreat from Kyiv, and so on. Yet, even as it was emphasising this military weakness of Russia, it continued to put out a parallel narrative that this weak Russian state, with its incompetent military brass, was, any day, also going to be posing a threat to the Baltics, Poland and Central and Eastern Europe!!!

Last year, we were told that all of the Leopard II tanks, and so on, provided by NATO to Ukraine, were going to finally see off the Russians. But, of course, as I had said at the time, it was never going to happen. Had the Russians have continued to try to invade the rest of Ukraine, as the NATO propaganda claimed they were going to do, then, yes, those tanks and other equipment would have made a difference, in the same way that such equipment made a difference in fighting against the initial Russian advance into Eastern Ukraine, and caused the Russians to lose large numbers of troops and equipment. But, so long as Russia stayed put and defended, having dug into defensive positions that was never going to be the case.

Tanks are great if they are taking part in tank battles against other tanks that are attacking your territory. You have defenders' advantage. However, if Ukraine, now, wants to take back Eastern Ukraine, it has to be the attacker. In the last year, as I had predicted, all of those hyped up NATO provided tanks proved useless, as they rolled on to Russian defensive positions, where they could be decimated by land mines, stuck in tank traps, as well as picked off by artillery, not to mention infantry using simple RPG's, drones and shoulder launched missiles that cost a fraction of a tank. The same is true of NATO provided jets. In short, this is lots of money, provided by taxpayers in NATO countries, that is basically going to finance war production in war production factories, and it is money that is going down a big hole simply to keep young Ukrainian workers – and young Russian workers on the other side – fighting in a war that is in none of their interests.