The ruling-class, today, a global class of speculators, i.e. owners of fictitious capital, which, increasingly, they buy not in order to derive a revenue from it, in the form of interest/dividends, but in the expectation of capital gains, is led to steal, i.e. to appropriate control over property they do not own – socialised capital – because that form of capital is now dominant, and control over it, by its actual, collective owners – the associated producers – would not only signify an imminent transition to the socialist society, but would also signify their own demise as a class.
Even in the short-term, control of that capital by its collective owners would mean that the amounts paid out as dividends would be reduced to what would be no more than a competitive market rate of interest. When its considered that, as Haldane notes, dividends went from being 10% of profits in the 1970's, to 70% of profits, today, the effect of that control is obvious. It means that share prices are also hugely inflated. If dividends fell back to 10% of profits, share prices would also fall correspondingly, to maintain the same yield.
The basis of the wealth and power of the ruling class based on that inflated paper wealth would be seriously undermined. Moreover, the attempt to maintain that inflated paper wealth, by inflating asset prices, over the last thirty years, has itself undermined real capital itself. Instead of profits going to accumulate real capital they have gone into speculation via the purchase of existing assets, thereby, continually bidding up their price. In order to prevent a rise in interest rates crashing these prices, the ruling class, has used its control of the state and the central banks to hold back economic growth, via austerity, lockdowns, and so on, to restrict the demand for labour and capital. The existing ruling class, thereby, becomes a fetter on the development of capital itself, upon which its own existence ultimately depends, and which bought it into existence. Only the future ruling class, the proletariat, as collective owners of that socialised capital, can remove that fetter, and ensure its free and rational development.
“We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and for ever immutable ethical law on the pretext that the moral world, too, has its permanent principles which stand above history and the differences between nations. We maintain on the contrary that so far every moral theory has, in the last analysis, been the product of the economic conditions of society obtaining at the time. And just as society has so far moved in class antagonisms, so morality has always been class morality; it has either justified the domination and the interests of the ruling class, or as soon as the oppressed class became powerful enough, it has represented its revolt against this domination and the future interests of the oppressed.” (p 118-9)
The morals of this transitional stage reflect these contradictions. Yet, Duhring sought to impose an eternal morality, independent of time or material conditions, on the future society, much as did the moral socialists such as Sismondi.
Duhring returns to an earlier theme in relation to the concept of evil, when he says,
“the fact that the type of the cat with the guile associated with it is found in animal form, stands on the same plane with the fact that a similar type of character is found also in human beings... There is therefore nothing mysterious about evil, unless someone wants to scent out something mysterious in the existence of a cat or of any animal of prey” (p 119)
In other words, we are back, here, with his argument about “the brutes”, in relation to Darwinian theory. But, as Marx pointed out, in his response to Proudhon, who similarly presented a moralistic contest between good and evil, without the “evil” aspect of this dichotomy, there is no forward dynamic. It is the rebellion against the consequences of the “evil” that produces the dynamic, that creates the forward movement. It is the serfs, separated from the land that must become the new class of independent commodity producers, in the towns, to live, that, then, become the urban bourgeoisie, which overthrows feudalism. It is the wage labourers, separated from the means of production, individually, that become the collective owners of socialised capital, as the basis of the transition to Socialism.
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