A long process of transition is required before not only is the possibility of counter-revolution removed, but society has developed the forces of production to such a degree that no rational basis for counter-revolution exists, and where the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” can be applied. All three forms of morality, Engels notes, have some commonality, precisely because, as representing different classes, they have a common root, in the development of class society out of the primitive commune. So, could this commonality be considered as fixed, absolute or eternal?
“From the moment when private ownership of personal property developed, all societies in which this private ownership existed had to have this moral injunction in common: Thou shalt not steal. Does this injunction thus become an eternal moral injunction? Not at all.” (p 118)
In fact, this moral injunction always means that individuals should not steal from other individuals in their class. A look at the Bible shows that, in fact, the moral code set out in the commandments reduces the position of slaves and servants to that of chattels, even in respect of the injunction “thou shall not kill”. The slave-owners systematically stole the labour of slaves, feudal landlords systematically stole the labour of peasants, and capitalists systematically steal the labour of workers.
Indeed, even within the constraints of bourgeois society, and its laws, that legitimise such stealing of labour, the further development of capital into socialised capital, shows that even more clearly. Bourgeois property laws give to the owner of property, alone, the right to control that property. The owner of capital controls it, whilst the owner of labour-power does the same. Both appear in the market as equal owners of commodities, who freely dispose of them in exchange.
As Marx describes in Capital, and elsewhere, it is not in the exchange of equal values that the theft of the workers labour occurs, but in the process of production, where the worker is only allowed to work if they agree to produce a greater quantity of new value than the value of their labour-power, a surplus value appropriated by the capitalist who gives nothing for it in exchange.
But, when we come to socialised capital, it is not the property of private capitalists. That is clearly the case with a worker cooperative. Indeed, in the latter case, its not even the property of the individual workers either. It exists as a corporate entity in its own right, the collective property of the workers employed within it. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, Chapter 27, this is equally true of the joint stock company, or what, today, we know as the limited company or corporation.
In these, the company itself as a legal entity owns its capital. It borrows money from a bank, or by issuing bonds or shares, in order to buy the elements of this capital in the form of buildings, machines, materials and labour-power. The lenders of the money are merely creditors of the company, not owners of its capital. They stand in the same position as a bank that lends money to someone to buy a house. Indeed, as Kay and Silberston describe, in “Corporate Governance”, in the same position as a landlord who rents land or buildings to a company, or a leasing company that lends equipment to it. We would not consider any of these as “owning” the company, nor having any right to control it, and the same applies to shareholders.
As such creditors, they have no legitimate right to control the company's capital, any more than a bank has a right to control what colour you paint your house, bought with the money they lent you. Indeed, a bank that lends money to a company, as well as bondholders who lend money to it, also, has no such right, and are unable to do so. It is only shareholders that have been given the legal right to exercise control over such capital, i.e. a right to exercise control over property they do not own, property that is collectively owned by the workers and managers within the given company. In itself, this reflects the degree to which this transitional form of property reflects the maturity of the contradictions within bourgeois society, as it metamorphoses into Socialism.
“In a society in which the motives for stealing are done away with, in which therefore in the course of time at the very most only lunatics can steal, how the preacher of morals would be jeered at who tried solemnly to proclaim the eternal truth: Thou shalt not steal!” (p 118)
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