Sunday, 17 November 2024

Michael Roberts' Fundamental Errors, III - Productive-labour, Surplus-value, and State Capitalism - Part 2 of 7

It may, or may not be the case that, having produced this new value, and surplus value, by their labour, the capitals that employ these workers do not realise that surplus value, in the value of their output, but that is true of all capitals. Likewise, the opposite may be true. As the most powerful monopolies, state capitals, as with any other monopoly, may use their power to obtain a larger share of total surplus value than the average. In other words, they charge prices above the price of production of their output, and so obtain surplus/monopoly profits. However, the consequence of that is that other capitals, then, have to share out the remaining surplus value, and so obtain less than the average rate of profit. In both cases, whether it is a state or non-state monopoly, the consequence is not a change in the mass of surplus-value, it is neither increased, nor diminished, and nor could it be, but is simply distributed differently.

Either way, the surplus value produced by the state workers does not simply disappear! Suppose we take a state owned coal industry. The state capital comprises let us say £1 billion of constant capital, £100 million of variable-capital, and with a 100% rate of surplus value, it creates £100 million of surplus value. In other words, the miners are paid £100 million in wages, which is equal to commodities that require 6 months to produce, whilst the miners work for a year, creating a year of new value, equal to 6 months of surplus value. In fact, this capital, like any other large-scale, socialised capital does not require any drain from existing surplus value, via taxation by the state. The state can simply issue bonds, as any other such enterprise does, to obtain the initial money-capital, and as for the output, it is bought directly by consumers, be they other businesses, or households. It, then, pays the interest on these bonds out of the £100 million of profit, it makes, each year, again, like any other business.

Firstly, is it true, as Roberts claims, that “capital is so opposed to state spending and investment and in favour of privatisation”, in such a case? Clearly not, which is why, after WWII, the British state nationalised the coal mines, along with many other staple industries, vital to the interests of British capital as a whole, and sank billions of pounds of investment into them. (More recently, after 2008, it also nationalised the banks, but without the socialist transformation the Militant previously assumed would follow). In fact, when, after the 1980's, those industries were privatised, they quickly disappeared, but for quite different reasons!

Moreover, Roberts' argument is very peculiar, because, if we look at the other privatised industries, such as railways, water companies, electricity companies, the shares in these companies are now owned by foreign, state-owned companies!!! Does Roberts think that there is something different about capital in these other countries, where the role of the state in developing the accumulation of capital has, from the start, played a significant role? This issue of the difference between the real industrial capital, as against the shares in those companies (fictitious-capital) I have dealt with elsewhere. Suffice it to say, here, that the real unproductive drain on the surplus value produced by workers, and realised as profit by this capital, is not the state, but is the excessive amounts paid out as interest/dividends to share and bondholders, which results from the fact that, as ruling class, the bourgeoisie assigned to itself, in company law, control over property, socialised capital, it does not own.


No comments:

Post a Comment