Corbyn And Your Party

After a long and fraught gestation period, the new left-wing party in British politics has been created, by former Labour MP's Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Initially, labelled “Your Party” they are asking supporters for suggestions for names, so that it can be decided when it holds a conference later this year. No doubt some wag will have proffered the suggestion of “Fruit and Nut” party! However, the fact that its reported to already have signed up more than 600,000 supporters, increasing by around 500 per minute, that 18% of the electorate say that they would possibly support a Left party led by Corbyn, and that, even before it has even got off the ground, it is standing level in the polls with Starmer's Blue Labour Party, shows this is no joke.  As Reform has shown in replacing The Tories, the electoral system means that, as Your Party draws its potential vote from Labour (plus Greens and Liberals), a collapse in Labour's vote is quite possible, as the election increasingly becomes one fought out between the reactionaries of Reform, and the progressive alternative offered by Your Party.

When Corbyn got on the ballot to stand for Labour Leader, in 2015, a similar skyrocketing in Labour membership took place. It went from around 200,000, many of whom were inactive, to over 600,000, most of the new recruits being young people, though a substantial number of older, former members rejoined, now seeing some prospect of an end to the days of bland, Blair-Right, conservative social-democracy. Under Corbyn, Labour became the largest political party in Europe, by some way, and with such a large membership, overnight, its funding problems, also, disappeared, filling the coffers, and ending the need to appeal to either the unions, or rich patrons via the prawn cocktail circuit. The surge in membership was matched by a surge in electoral support, despite the efforts of the Tory media, and of the right-wing inside the party itself, which did all it could to undermine Labour's position, including attempts to launch two parliamentary coups against him, spearheaded by members of Labour Friends of Zionism.

Corbyn's Labour, in the 2017 General Election, saw the biggest increase in its vote, since 1945. Compared to 2015, Corbyn's Labour saw its vote rise by more than 3 million votes, a rise of nearly 40%. It rose by 50% compared to Labour's vote in 2010. That was despite the attempted parliamentary coup, and no confidence vote by the PLP, and perpetual sniping, the undermining of the functioning of the party machine, as the right-wing retained control of the bureaucracy, as well as all of the increasing fuelling of media stories about intimidation, as those right-wing MP's simply faced the censure by their own party members in the constituencies. The right of the party who had banked on a poor performance, in 2017, as the springboard for another assault on Corbyn, could hardly contain their disappointment, when all their efforts to undermine Labour turned out in vain, and Corbyn, almost snatched victory, obtaining 40% of the poll, just behind the 42% obtained by Theresa May, whose parliamentary majority disappeared.

They had to wait until 2019, when Corbyn's Labour lost to Boris Johnson's Tories, amidst a full scale shit storm whipped up on the basis of largely baseless accusations of widespread anti-Semitism in the party. In fact, those charges were shown to be largely false, and malicious, in subsequent investigations. That some of those involved in promoting them have gone on to show their true colours as defenders of war criminals and as genocide deniers, is exemplified by the former Chair of Labour Friends of Zionism, David Mencer, who claimed he was leaving Britain for Israel out of fear of a future Corbyn Labour government, and who now daily lies and denies an actual genocide is taking place against Palestinians, as the media spokesman of the Zionist regime.

But, the response of Corbyn, and of his Stalinist advisors, at that time, facilitated the strategy of the Labour Right, and their alliance with the Zionists. Time after time, Corbyn and his supporters, who had mobilised thousands of members via Momentum, refused to tackle the challenge presented by the Right. A priority was to have democratised the party, but that was hardly something the Stalinists that increasingly dominated Corbyn's office are renowned for. On the contrary, Stalinism always operates bureaucratically, seeking behind the scenes deals and alliances. Moreover, the Stalinists must have had huge concerns over the fact that the 400,000 new members, drawn in were largely to their Left, and one reason they were drawn in was their opposition to Brexit, a political trajectory not at all in keeping with the petty-bourgeois nationalist ideology of Stalinism, nor of Corbyn.

Whilst, the stepped up attempts to undermine Labour's 2019 election campaign, the ever more hyperbolic claims about anti-Semititism and so on, played a pivotal role in Labour's defeat in 2019, it was the inadequate politics of Corbynism, and of his Stalinist advisors that sealed it. In the Spring elections of 2019, even 60% of Labour members voted for other, anti-Brexit parties, as Corbyn swung Labour back towards his old, 1970's anti-Common Market positions. And, not only was Corbyn setting his face against the vast majority of the party membership, around 90% of whom opposed Brexit, on that front, but he was also failing to defend party members falsely accused of anti-Semitism, and who were being daily suspended or expelled by the party machine, still in the control of the Right.

Nevertheless, despite all of the jubilation at Labour's defeat by the Right of the party, in the 2019 General Election, Corbyn still did better than did Stamer's Blue Labour in 2024, which saw its vote fall below that of Corbyn's Labour by half a million votes. Compared to 2017, Starmer's Blue Labour saw its vote fall by 3 million votes, and obtained only 34% of the poll, compared to the 40% obtained by Corbyn's Labour in 2017. Since then, as Blue Labour has attacked workers, the elderly, the young, the sick and disabled, and spent two years repaying its debt to the Zionists for their aid in removing Corbyn, its support has cratered even further.

The experience of Corbyn's Labour shows precisely the weakness of this new party. The Labour Party has never been, in reality, just a single party. It is, basically, a popular front. It is a coalition under a big tent, of different classes and their political interests, just as the Liberal Party of the 19th century, was a party, established to represent what was seen as the aligned (social-democratic) interests of the industrial capitalists, and industrial working-class, against the interests of the old landed aristocracy, and their allies within the commercial bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy. The Labour Party was created by the unions, when the working-class became by far the largest component of that class alliance, but did so, whilst still retaining the old social-democratic ideology of the ultimate symbiotic relation between the interests of capital and labour that simply had to be negotiated, though always within the context of the ultimate primacy of the needs of capital and capital accumulation.

The objection of Marxists to the creation of some new mass workers party has always been that these proposals, put forward by sections of the Left, from time to time, have sought to simply replicate all of those deficiencies of the Labour Party itself. In other words, to create a Labour Party Mark II. Just as with all of the other Popular Fronts, created by sections of the Left, over the last 100 years, they have sought to privilege size and scope of organisation over, politics and programme. In order to draw in large numbers, the clarity of ideas, based on class interest has been watered down to the lowest common denominator, so as not to frighten the horses, not to scare off all of the radical vicars, much beloved by the Stalinists and Liberals.

In his Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx faced a similar problem. In 1848, as Engels described in his letters to various US socialists, he and Marx had joined the German Democrats, an openly bourgeois party. Why? Because, in the context of the revolutions of 1848, the tiny forces of socialism had to do what they could to win the ear of the workers, who were, themselves mobilising in support of the bourgeois revolution. But, Marx and Engels made clear that, in doing so, they saw themselves both as part of that movement, and simultaneously as having their own separate stream within it.

”When we returned to Germany, in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of getting the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it.”

(Engels to Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky)

He goes on to describe how, as such a “wing”, they advanced their own ideas and programme, and without doing so, what would be the purpose of “getting the ear” of the workers? Its on that basis that Marxists always justified their involvement in the Labour Party, or other such social-democratic parties, in conditions where there were no mass communist parties. Where a mass Marxist party does exist, the question does not arise. In those conditions, as Trotsky and the Communist International set out, in the Theses on The United Front, a mass communist party can simply propose to other workers the formation of a workers united front in action, for example, to fight the fascists, on the streets, and so on, and, in the process, as the leaders of those other workers parties shrink from any such joint action, so the workers still attached to those parties are drawn away from them. But, Trotsky, and the CI, considered that such conditions would require the communists to have around 40% of the working class already behind them. We are far from such conditions.

At the time of the joint congress of the Lassalleans and Eisenachers at Gotha, the German working-class was growing rapidly, though still not the largest class. Marx considered that the formation of a single large workers party in such conditions, was an important step forward, a point reiterated by Engels in his letters to US socialists. But, as can be seen in his Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx did not consider that this justified the Eisenachers abandoning their programme. That didn't mean that Marx and Engels opposed the formation of the new party, but that they believed that, it would have been better to have agreed to not have a jointly agreed programme, than to have one that was a step backward.

As Marxists, we clearly have no interest in agreeing to a programme that is inadequate to the needs of the working-class, and of driving the class struggle forward. Similarly, there is no point in us creating yet another party, with such an inadequate ideological basis, simply in order to broaden its appeal to other class forces, and their political representatives, i.e. popular frontism. We have no interest in creating a Labour Party Mk. II. But, given the tiny forces of Marxism, at the present time, that is clearly a different question to what our attitude should be to any party that is created by others. We still have the question of tactics of how best to get the ear of workers, and, in particular, the most advanced sections of workers.

At the present time, if “Your Party” is likely to represent simply the creation of a Labour Party Mark II, Starmer's Blue Labour has turned the Labour Party Mark I, into a Labour Party Mark -I. In other words, not even into the Liberal Party out of which the Labour Party emerged, but a step back beyond that, a regression to the kind of "Young England" nationalism of Disraeli's Tories of the 19th century, and what Marx and Engels termed "Reactionary Socialism". On the one hand, “Your Party” could act as the kind of external whip on the Labour Party that UKIP/Brexit Party represented in relation to the Tories. But, that external whip on the Tories carried on for a quarter of a century, before the Conservative Party eventually fractured, into its bourgeois and petty-bourgeois wings, with the latter metamorphosing into Reform, and the former left as a rump that must be swallowed by the Liberals, in short order.

If the figures for those signing up to “Your Party” are correct, then that is something qualitatively different, even than the role of UKIP etc. Even if the claim of half a million members is wildly exaggerated, and the real figure is half that, it would mean that, in every constituency across Britain, there would be around 500 members, or about one in a hundred voters would be members. Combined with the polling data showing the party already level with Blue Labour, the significance of that membership base, then, becomes obvious. At least one person, in every street in Britain, would, on average, be a member of Your Party, which not only means no shortage of local candidates in local and other elections, but candidates known by and recognised by their neighbours. Given that, as with Corbyn's Labour, most of these members will be young, enthusiastic and active, compared to the old, moribund membership, not only of Blue Labour, Liberals and Conservatives, but also Reform, this is a significant development.

In a couple of months, the Labour Party holds its annual conference. What the Labour Party still has, is the links to the trades unions that created it, as well as to the cooperative movement. That organic link still enables the Labour Party to be saved from Blue Labour. The writing is on the wall with the warnings from UNITE to Starmer and Rayner. Blue Labour do not dare even publish their current membership figures which have collapsed, not least from the thousands of members expelled for daring challenge the leadership and its support for the genocide committed by the Zionist state. If the unions fail to call a halt to the Blue Labour project, in the Autumn, the writing appears to be on the wall.

The unions created Labour at the start of the last century, for one reason, because it was easier to do so than to try to change the Liberal Party itself, which remained in the control of the industrial bourgeoisie. The same may be true, today, in relation to Labour and Your Party. If the unions and individual party members do not kick out Starmer and put an end to the Blue Labour regime in the Autumn, members and voters will flock to Your Party. Given the history of Corbyn's Labour, we have to be concerned, as Marxists, as to how that pans out for them. For one thing, however, they will not have to deal with all of the crap and obstacles thrown at them by the Labour Right, which, of itself, liberates them to engage in positive action.

The formation of the party also facilitates the drawing together of all of the various Left sects, many of which voluntarily excluded themselves from the Labour Party on the basis of supposedly protecting their ideological purity. Whether they seize the opportunity will be up to them. As Engels put it, writing to US socialists,

"….It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug tererden" [to learn by one's own mistakes]. And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H.G. or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own.”

(ibid)

It seems that Marxists will have to relate to Your Party, at the same time as seeking to utilise its external whip on Labour, to drive out Blue Labour. The relation for now can only be algebraic until such time as history shows which of these parties will prevail as the workers party. In both cases, Marxists continue to stand alongside the workers as they travel this road, and we continue to advance our own independent programme, based on the class struggle, and interests of the working-class, by addressing the property question.

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. II – The Force Theory - Part 4 of 9

Similarly, capitalism itself arises because the private property of large numbers of independent commodity producers becomes centralised and concentrated in the hands of a small number of capitalist producers. Firstly, therefore, the private property of the former already exists, or it could not fall into the hands of the capitalist producers. The process by which it does become centralised and concentrated in their hand, again has nothing to do with force, but is the direct result of the competition that is inherent in commodity production and exchange. It produces winners and losers – who become bourgeois and proletarians.

“In other words, even if we exclude all possibility of robbery, any act of violence and any fraud, if we assume that all private property was originally based on the owner's own labour, and that throughout the whole subsequent process there was only exchange of equal values for equal values, the progressive evolution of production and exchange nevertheless brings us of necessity to the present capitalist mode of production, to the monopolisation of the means of production and the means of subsistence in the hands of the one, numerically small, class, to the degradation into propertyless proletarians of the immense majority forming the other class, to the periodic alternation of speculative production booms and commercial crises and to the whole of the present anarchy of production. The entire process is explained by purely economic causes; without the necessity for recourse even in a single instance to robbery, force, the state or political interference of any kind.” (p 208)

Indeed, far from the sequence being that the bourgeoisie became the ruling class, and able, thereby, to mobilise the state to subjugate the proletariat, and so establish the economic relations of bourgeois society, it is the bourgeoisie that faces the entrenched position of the political domination of the feudal aristocracy and its state. In Duhring's theory, we must see the ruling class as some kind of eternal social formation that simply changes its spots with every new mode of production, but whose personnel remains basically unchanged. It is a good v evil morality play, in which there are a bunch of evil exploiters, who simply change their stage costumes, with each new act of the play.

I have noted that this same subjectivist, and moralistic, historical account is adopted, today, by even some who call themselves “Marxists”. (See: Michael Roberts and Historical Materialism). As Engels notes,

“If “political conditions are the decisive cause of the economic situation”, then the modern bourgeoisie cannot have developed in struggle with feudalism, but must be the latter's voluntarily begotten pet child. Everyone knows that it was the opposite which occurred. Originally an oppressed estate tributary to the ruling feudal nobility, recruited from all manner of serfs and villeins, the burghers conquered one position after another in their constant struggle with the nobility, and finally took power in its stead in the most highly developed countries”. (p 2089-9)

But, how did it do that? Firstly, the bourgeoisie, itself, must exist as a class in itself, separate from the ruling landlord class, and the working-class. In Duhring's account, and in the subjectivist account of today's moralists, the bourgeoisie arises, somehow, as just a continuation of the existing, ruling feudal class, as Engels notes, as its pet or protege, which is quite in contrast to the actual historical reality. The moralist conception is idealist and subjectivist. It takes the form that capitalism begins in agriculture, with the existing landlords, forcibly evicting peasants from the land, in order to turn the land over to sheep, so as to increase the supply of wool to meet a large increase in demand from the towns.

The flaws in this account, and argument, are fairly obvious. Firstly, what was the basis of this large rise for wool in the towns? It was precisely that, in those towns, commodity production and exchange had already become well established, creating large, centralised markets, and that this had, then, resulted in the establishment of capitalist production. In other words, capitalist production, in the towns, and its greater level of output (at lower unit values/prices, which expands the market) had to come before the increased demand for wool, and, so, before any basis for landlords to turn the land over to sheep.

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Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. II – The Force Theory - Part 3 of 9

Duhring's proposition that all property is the result of, and rests upon force is a version of Proudhon's mantra that “all property is theft”. The reality is that, in order to obtain superior force, a previous development of property, and its accumulation in the hands of a section of society is required first.

“How did this property come into existence? In any case it is clear that it may have been robbed, and therefore may be based on force, but that this is by no means necessary. It may have been obtained by labour, by theft, by trade or by fraud. Nevertheless, it must have been obtained by labour before there was any possibility of its being robbed.” (p 205-6)

In the Old Testament story of Joseph, he advised the Pharaoh to store food during the seven years of plenty. When the seven lean years came, he was able to supply the other peasant producers with food, but, first, in exchange for their children being taken into servitude, then their wives, and eventually themselves.

“Private property by no means makes its appearance in history as the result of robbery or force. On the contrary. It already existed, though limited to certain objects, in the ancient primitive communes of all civilised peoples. It developed into the form of commodities already within these communes, at first through barter with foreigners. The more the products of the commune assumed the commodity form, that is, the less they were produced for the producers' own use and the more for the purpose of exchange, and the more the original natural division of labour was supplanted by exchange within the commune as well, the more unequal became the property status of the individual commune members, the more deeply was the ancient common ownership of the land undermined, and the more rapidly did the commune move towards its dissolution and transformation into a village of smallholding peasants.” (p 206)

Engels describes this process in “The Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State”.

In Native American tribes, as with Celtic clans, chiefs and chieftains arise, not on the basis of force, but on the back of common ownership and voluntary agreement. The chiefs are usually those that distinguish themselves in battle with other tribes, just as the Medicine Men, and other religious leaders establish themselves on the basis of some supposed secret knowledge, and connection to the spirit world. That may arise from some actual knowledge of the medicinal properties of plants, or knowledge of the stars, seasons and so on, or, simply, as a result of guile and trickery. Either way, it is not force, and, again, requires the existence of a social surplus. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, it is this social surplus, originally paid as tribute to these leaders, that consolidates into an entitlement based purely on rank, status and tradition. It forms the basis of feudal rent, tithes and taxes.

“For thousands of years Oriental despotism and the changing rule of conquering nomad peoples were unable to injure these old communities; the gradual destruction of their primitive home industry by the competition of products of large-scale industry brought them nearer and nearer to dissolution. Force was as little involved in this process as in the dividing up of the land held in common by the village communities [Gehöferschaften] on the Moselle and in the Hochwald, which is still taking place today; the peasants simply find it to their advantage that the private ownership of land should take the place of common ownership.” (p 206)

Marx makes the same point in relation to the role of Britain in India.

“These small stereotype forms of social organism have been to the greater part dissolved, and are disappearing, not so much through the brutal interference of the British tax-gatherer and the British soldier, as to the working of English steam and English free trade. Those family-communities were based on domestic industry, in that peculiar combination of hand-weaving, hands-spinning and hand-tilling agriculture which gave them self-supporting power. English interference having placed the spinner in Lancashire and the weaver in Bengal, or sweeping away both Hindoo spinner and weaver, dissolved these small semi-barbarian, semi-civilized communities, by blowing up their economical basis, and thus produced the greatest, and to speak the truth, the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.”

(The British Rule in India)

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Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. II – The Force Theory - Part 2 of 9

Duhring's argument is that the starting point is simply the division of society into the weak and the strong, and the ability of the strong to subjugate the weak, by the use if force. This, of course, from Duhring, who, in relation to Darwin's theory, was appalled by his mischaracterisation of it as a theory of “the brutes”.

“Crusoe enslaved Friday only in order that Friday should work for Crusoe's benefit. And how can he derive any benefit for himself from Friday's labour? Only through Friday's producing by his labour more of the necessaries of life than Crusoe has to give him to keep him fit to work. Therefore, in violation of Herr Dühring's express orders, Crusoe, “takes the political grouping” arising out of Friday’s enslavement “not, as the starting-point for its own sake but exclusively as a means of getting grub”; and now let him see to it that he gets along with his lord and master, Dühring.” (p 203)

Consequently, even using Duhring's example, it fails at the first hurdle, and proves the opposite of what he asserted. But, it fails further. Not only does the example require that productivity has risen to a level whereby Friday can produce enough for two, but it begs the question of, then, how Robinson can subjugate him, and extract and appropriate this surplus product. What if Friday simply reduces his output, or just runs away?

“Subjugation has always been—to use Herr Dühring's elegant expression—a “means of getting grub” (taking getting grub in its widest sense), but never and nowhere a political grouping established “for its own sake”. It takes a Herr Dühring to be able to imagine that state taxes are only “second order effects”, or that the present-day political grouping of the dominant bourgeoisie and the dominated proletariat has come into existence “for its own sake”, and not as a “means of getting grub” for the dominant capitalists, that is to say, for the sake of making profits and accumulating capital.” (p 204)

If we take capitalist society, its true that force plays a significant role in keeping the ruling class in place, via its state. But, a far more important role is played by the fact that the relations of production, and the social relations created by them, appear natural. Even in relation to the state, on a day to day basis, the most significant role is played by its ideological arms – religion, education, the media – than its bodies of armed men. On a day to day basis, the latter appear to be merely neutral, custodians of law and order, acting to protect all of “society”, as guardians of “the people”, much as did the Hobbesian Leviathan. It is only when those bodies of armed men are openly mobilised against “the people”, as for example Trump has done in California, that their true nature is exposed. Usually, the ruling class, only resorts to such methods, in extreme cases of threat to its rule, which is why the ruling class can be far from happy about such use by Trump, in current conditions.

The bourgeoisie did not subjugate workers by force, but via simple economic processes, the failure of the least efficient, independent commodity producers, and their transformation into proletarians. And, in fact, returning to Crusoe and Friday, to enslave the latter, Crusoe requires ownership of means of production and subsistence. They do not appear from nowhere, and so assumes a degree not only of previous production, but, also, the development of a significant degree of inequality in distribution, allowing Crusoe to have already appropriated this accumulation of wealth.

“In the ancient primitive communities with common ownership of the land, slavery either does not exist at all or plays only a very subordinate role. It was the same in the originally peasant city of Rome; but when Rome became a “world city” and Italic landownership increasingly fell into the hands of a numerically small class of enormously rich proprietors, the peasant population was squeezed out by a population of slaves. If the number of slaves in Corinth rose to 460,000 and in Aegina to 470,000 at the time of the Persian wars and there were ten slaves to every freeman, something else besides “force” was required, namely, a highly developed arts and handicraft industry and an extensive commerce. Slavery in the United States of America was based far less on force than on the English cotton industry; in those areas where no cotton was grown or which, unlike the border states, did not breed slaves for the cotton-growing states, it died out of itself without any force being used, simply because it did not pay.” (p 204-5)

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Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. II – The Force Theory - Part 1 of 9

The force theory is an extension of the “Great Man” theory of history, the role of the individual in history. As Engels notes, Duhring presented himself as originating this theory, whereas it has been the most common form of historical account, both before and since. The history of societies has always been presented as the history of a few important individuals – Kings, Princes, Emperors, dictators – who establish political regimes, and, having done so, shape the economic and social relations of society.

In this theory, politics dominates economics, and politics and the political regime rests upon superior force. The question of how this superior force is acquired, and to what end, is ignored. Consequently, the real history of peoples, of that great mass, which proceeds quietly in the background, is lost.

The foundation of Duhring's theory has already been set out. It resides in his original two-person society, and in the enslavement of Man Friday by Robinson Crusoe. According to Duhring, the starting point for the theory of history, of social evolution, is this fundamental political relation of subjugation, and everything that transpires after it is simply a development and refinement of it. It is an equivalent of Creationism, but applied to social development. He says,

““In my system, the relation between general politics and the forms of economic rights is determined in so decisive and at the same time so original a way that it would not be superfluous, to make special reference to this point in order to facilitate study. The formation of political relationships is the historically fundamental factor, and instances of economic dependence are only effects or special cases, and are consequently always facts of a second order. Some of the newer socialist systems take as their guiding principle the striking semblance of a completely reverse relationship, by making the political infrastructure as it were, grow out of the economic conditions. It is true that these second order effects do exist as such, and are most clearly perceptible at the present time; but the primary factor must be sought in direct political force and not in any indirect economic power”.” (p 201-2)

And, emphasises this point, where he,

““starts from the principle that political conditions are the decisive cause of the economic situation and that the reverse relationship represents only a second order reaction ... so long as anyone takes the political grouping not as the starting-point, for its own sake, but merely as a means of getting grub, he must be harbouring a hidden dose of reaction in his mind, however radical a socialist and revolutionary one may seem to be”.” (p 202)

Again, we have seen with Duhring's treatment of natural science, and particularly biological evolution, that he begins by dismissing the real basis of change, but, then, later, reintroduces it by the backdoor, as such second-order effects. And, also, Duhring's approach is to state these ideas as assertions, without any argument to support them, or to challenge those that present an opposing theory. As Engels notes, here, he simply charges his opponents as being “reactionary”.

But, even if we take Duhring's simplistic argument of Robinson and Man Friday, it poses more questions than it answers. Why does Robinson enslave Friday? According to Duhring, it has no economic foundations, i.e. is not a consequence of Robinson seeking a “means of getting grub”, by having Friday produce it for him. So why then?

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Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, I - Subject Matter and Method - Part 20 of 20

In other words, for Duhring, history consists of nothing but a succession of different legal and constitutional forms of such slavery and oppression, resting upon nothing other than this ability to use force for that subjugation. It is true that, in each society, an exploiting ruling-class subjugates the labouring class, and appropriates surplus labour. Engels quotes Marx.

““Capital has not invented surplus-labour. Wherever a part of society possesses the monopoly of the means of production, the labourer, free or not free, must add to the working-time necessary for his own maintenance an extra working-time in order to produce the means of subsistence for the owners of the means of production, whether this proprietor be the Athenian kalos kagathos [aristocrat], Etruscan theocrat, civis Romanus [Roman citizen], Norman baron, American slave-owner, Wallachian Boyard, modern landlord or capitalist” (Marx, Das Kapital, Vol. I, 2nd edition, p. 227).

But, what is significant, in each of these societies is not the fact of this common factor of the production of surplus labour/value, and its appropriation by the ruling-class, but the specific way in which that surplus labour is produced in each of these societies, and the corresponding specific way in which it is appropriated, which, in turn, determines the specific form of distribution.

For Duhring, all of these specifics are irrelevant, and simply superficial gloss to the underlying reality of subjugation based on force.

“Therefore he no longer needs to investigate or to prove things, but can just go on merrily declaiming and demand that the distribution of the products of labour should be regulated, not in accordance with its real causes, but in accordance with what seems ethical and just to him, Herr Dühring. But what seems just to Herr Dühring is not at all immutable, and hence very far from being a genuine truth. For genuine truths, according to Herr Dühring himself, are “absolutely immutable”.” (p 199)

Even for Duhring, what was just and rational became unjust and robbery, in less than ten years. Engels notes that, in 1868, Duhring had written, it is

“... “a tendency of all higher civilisation to put more and more emphasis on property, and that the essence and the future of modern development lie in this, not in the confusion of rights and spheres of sovereignty,”.” (p 199)

And could not see,

“how a transformation of wage-labour into another manner of gaining a livelihood is ever to be reconciled with the laws of human nature and the naturally necessary structure of the body social”. (p 199)

Better, then, Engels says, to stick with “genuine, objective economic laws”, when analysing the distribution of wealth and income.

“We should be in a pretty bad way, and might have a long time to wait for the impending overthrow of the present mode of distribution of the products of labour, with its crying contrasts of misery and luxury, and of famine and feasting, if we had no better guarantee than the consciousness that this mode of distribution is unjust, and that justice must eventually triumph.” (p 200)

Yet, that is the kind of moralising approach of most of the “Left”, today, whether it comes to inequality within capitalist societies, or between the developed and less developed economies. It fits with the reformist, economistic, essentially trades union consciousness they limit their horizons to. The recognition and proclamation of inequality was made more than 400 years ago, but its recognition was not enough to change anything. It was resumed in the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th century, but disappeared once the bourgeoisie became ruling-class.

But, that outcry against inequality had resumed in the latter half of the 19th century, because, Engels says, capitalism had created an industrial proletariat below which there can be no additional exploited class. By liberating itself, it liberates the whole of society. At the same time, this development of the productive forces expands to an extent that it outgrows the limits of the monopoly ownership of private capital, leading to its dissolution by socialised capital, and also expands faster than the market, making necessary, first the planning and regulation of production, and second the expansion of the market across national borders.

“In other words, the reason is that both the productive forces engendered by the modern capitalist mode of production and the system of distribution of goods established by it have come into crying contradiction with that mode of production itself, so much so that, if the whole of modern society is not to perish, a revolution in the mode of production and distribution must take place, a revolution which will put an end to all class distinctions. It is on this palpable material fact which is more or less clearly impressing itself with irresistible necessity on the minds of the exploited proletarians—it is on this fact, and not on any armchair philosopher's conceptions of justice and injustice that the sure confidence of modern socialism in victory is founded.” (p 201)

Back To Part 19

Forward To II - The Force Theory

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Northern Soul Classics - That's The Way He Is - Ann Perry

 

Friday Night Disco - Soul Serenade - King Curtis

 

Blue Labour's Government of War Criminals and Genocide Deniers

Blue Labour is a party based on reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism. It is no longer a bourgeois, workers' party. Its ideology is no longer the relatively progressive ideology of the bourgeoisie, of large-scale industrial capital, but a throwback to the ideas of the petty-bourgeoisie, a reactionary attempt to hold back the onward march of history. That is why, although it has claimed that the key to all its programs is economic growth, it stubbornly refuses to accept that the one single thing that would facilitate that growth is to abandon the disastrous commitment to Brexit, and to take Britain back into the EU as soon as they possibly could.

Last night, I watched the BBC Four documentary, “The Improbable Mr. Attlee”, and was struck by the similarities of the egregious unforced errors made by that government, and those being repeated, by Blue Labour, today. As with Starmer, the errors made by Attlee, meant that going from a large majority, in 1945, his attacks on workers, continued implementation of rationing, huge wasteful spending on arms, undermined the economy, and led to the return of the Tories in 1951. But, at least, Attlee had won huge numbers of votes, unlike Blue Labour, which only secured a parliamentary majority as a result of the corrupt nature of the electoral system, and a division in the votes for Tories and Reform.

One of the aspects of those errors was the attempt to cling to the former colonial delusions. In the end, reality imposed itself there too, as Britain scuttled from its former colonies, in turn, leading to conditions that fuelled many of the present conflicts across the globe, including that in Israel/Palestine. The attempt to cling to Empire was one reason that Attlee's government wastefully spent money on weapons, and maintaining an army so big that it constituted 10% of the total workforce, at a time when the economy was desperate for workers to rebuild its infrastructure, and provide all of the goods and services for which workers were in desperate need. To put it another way 90% of the workforce was working to produce the goods and services that the 10% in the army consumed, let alone all of the production that went into the military equipment.

The reflection of that was that whilst, in Europe, economies began to recover and grow, this wasteful arms spending, in Britain, undermined economic growth and capital accumulation – expanded negative reproduction – as it sucked in resources and surplus value that should have gone to real capital accumulation. The other manifestation of that, was that as the economy failed to grow, and as surplus value was drained into this destructive military spending, Attlee's government had to try to boost surplus value, which it did by imposing wage controls on workers, and sending in the troops to break strikes for higher wages. It imposed a continuation of rationing, which even meant that an already meagre calorie consumption by workers, fell further still, even compared to the last year of the war.

But, where Attlee's government, like that of Wilson/Callaghan of the 1960's and 70's, was still miles ahead of that of Starmer, is that those earlier governments were still bourgeois workers' parties. They relied upon the votes of the working-class, and their ideology was that of large-scale industrial capital, whose advance they sought to achieve. That is why that government nationalised the core industries vital for the development of capital, although, as the programme documents, the way it did so, was inefficient and bureaucratic. Of course, they could never consider the idea of placng those industries under democratic workers control, and if they had, the ruling class would quickly have removed them. But, nor did they place them under direct government control, instead following the model in the rest of big business of having Boards of Directors appointed, and those Boards, were inevitably comprised of the same personnel as those that littered the boards of the other large corporations.

But, it was still way in advance of the current Blue Labour government, whose world view is that which extends no further than where it thinks it can obtain the next vote, and always sees it by appealing to the worst sections of society, to the basest elements, to all of the racism and bigotry that festers in the swamp of the large petit-bourgeois mass. So, its no wonder that Starmer has found his soulmates in likeminded reactionary petit-bourgeois regimes across the globe, with his early visit to Meloni in Italy, his fawning at the feet of Trump, as he licked his arse, in hope of some favour or possibly just more personal freebies of the kind that have characterised the corrupt nature of the Blue Labour regime, and, of course, in that same camp is the detestable Netanyahu, to whose Zionist regime, Blue Labour owes the favour, of all of the efforts, of people like David Mencer, former Chair of Labour Friends of Zionism, in removing Corbyn.

Blue Labour has been repaying that debt over the last 20 months, as the Zionist regime has engaged in genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, as well as expanding its war of annexation and colonisation in Lebanon and Syria. Not only has Blue Labour continued to supply weapons to its Zionist friends to carry out that genocide, but it has been more than zealous in even denying the right of anyone, particularly Labour members, to point out that what the Zionist regime was engaged in was genocide. In other words, Blue Labour has carried out the biggest act of genocide denial ever seen. Those right-wing crackpots that over the years denied the Holocaust against Jews, were always a small minority, and always ostracised. But, the genocide being committed against Palestinians is happening in real-time for all to see.

As Owen Jones says, in this video, no one has any excuse for not recognising that what has been happening and continues to happen in Palestine is a genocide. The Zionists themselves were open about what they were doing, even though, when it has come to individual atrocities, they have always tried to dress it up as being some kind of error, having first denied it ever happened. Its spokespeople like Mencer, who has been, even when he was Chair of Labour Friends of Zionism, either a blatant liar, or a delusional fantasist, continue to lie about the actions of the Zionist state, having grown used to being able to say any bullshit they like and have it repeated as holy script by western politicians and media. But, even they are now seeing the completion of the Zionists' Final Solution, against the Palestinians in its closing stages, and are turning to a balance of concern over their own futures, as against the need to ensure that the Zionists can continue to do their dirty work for them.

So, its no surprise that 28 countries wrung their hands, and cried crocodile tears for the Palestinians, as they meekly implored the Zionists to stop, knowing, of course, that they will not. Their concerns, of course, have not been sufficient to end arms sales to the Zionist state, let alone to suggest a “liberal intervention” to prevent the genocide, as they did in relation to Libya and Syria. Quite the contrary, not only do the arms sales continue, but Britain and other countries have acted militarily against the Houthis, as they tried to stop shipments to the Zionists, and, of course, as the Zionist state extended its war of annexation to Syria and Lebanon, and launched attacks on Iran, NATO has put its own protective shield around Israel, to enable it to continue such attacks, free from the chance of effective retaliation. And, of course, Blue Labour has ridiculously branded Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation for itself taking direct action to protest at UK arms sales used to carry out genocide.

The lying speeches of Blue Labour Ministers are gut wrenchingly awful, and the performance of the media are no better, which continues to repeat the lies of the Zionist state about October 7th and UNWRA being comprised of card carrying members of HAMAS and so on. But, Owen Jones is wrong in thinking that these creatures will be held to account, and face the dock. Short of a widespread international socialist revolution, that is not going to happen. The Zionist regime, as Merz admitted a few weeks ago, has been doing western imperialism's work for it. Those that commissioned that work, in western governments are not going to put themselves in the dock.

Nor should we simply wait for such an event to happen. If we do, we make it all the less likely. The backbench Tory MP, Kit Malthouse, at least, appealed to Labour MP's to call the government to account. There is not much chance of that either, but socialists, via the trades unions, and even still via, their individual membership of the party, as we approach the annual conference, do have the opportunity to call these reactionary scumbags to account. Starmer must go, and all those Blue Labour MP's that stand behind him must be sent packing too. We need to rebuild the labour movement from the ground up, to rejuvenate and democratise the unions, and to use that as the driving force back into the Labour Party itself, to get rid of the ideology of Blue Labour, and to get rid of all those MP's elected to represent it. It needs to be ripped out root and branch.

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, I - Subject Matter and Method - Part 19 of 20

Marx, himself, of course, utilised Robinson Crusoe to illustrate not distribution or exchange, but The Law of Value, and its determination of value by labour-time. In Capital I, he writes,

“Since Robinson Crusoe’s experiences are a favourite theme with political economists, let us take a look at him on his island. Moderate though he be, yet some few wants he has to satisfy, and must therefore do a little useful work of various sorts, such as making tools and furniture, taming goats, fishing and hunting. Of his prayers and the like we take no account, since they are a source of pleasure to him, and he looks upon them as so much recreation. In spite of the variety of his work, he knows that his labour, whatever its form, is but the activity of one and the same Robinson, and consequently, that it consists of nothing but different modes of human labour. Necessity itself compels him to apportion his time accurately between his different kinds of work. Whether one kind occupies a greater space in his general activity than another, depends on the difficulties, greater or less as the case may be, to be overcome in attaining the useful effect aimed at. This our friend Robinson soon learns by experience, and having rescued a watch, ledger, and pen and ink from the wreck, commences, like a true-born Briton, to keep a set of books. His stock-book contains a list of the objects of utility that belong to him, of the operations necessary for their production; and lastly, of the labour time that definite quantities of those objects have, on an average, cost him. All the relations between Robinson and the objects that form this wealth of his own creation, are here so simple and clear as to be intelligible without exertion, even to Mr. Sedley Taylor. And yet those relations contain all that is essential to the determination of value.”

(Capital I, Ch. 1. Section 4)

But, nothing more can be derived from this, in relation to exchange, precisely because there is no one else to exchange with. The distribution is determined by Robinson's production, but, also, his production is conditioned by his own consumption. In terms of exchange, he can only exchange with himself. In other words, again in accordance with the Law of Value, he can only exchange his consumption of a given quantity of A, by giving up a quantity of his consumption of B, the proportional relation of the two being determined by the amount of his labour-time required to produce both A and B.

Yet, Duhring says,

“In fact nothing more than this simple dualism is required to enable us to portray some of the most important relations of distribution in all their rigour and to study their laws embryonically in their logical necessity... Co-operative work on an equal footing is here just as conceivable as the combination of forces through the complete subjection of one party, who is then compelled to render economic service as a slave or as a mere tool and is also only maintained as a tool.” (p 197)

Clearly, that is not the case. Taking the primitive level of production represented by Robinson Crusoe, the existence of another Robinson, on the island, only makes possible the first option, i.e. of cooperative labour. Cooperative labour brings with it additional productivity, which means more for both producers as consumption. Without such cooperative labour, the second Robinson, or Man Friday, can only produce the same amount as Robinson, most, if not all of which would be required to sustain himself, leaving no surplus, for Robinson. Moreover, under such conditions, as always seen with slavery, Friday would be likely to produce less, to resist, to abscond and so on.

Duhring continues,

“Between the state of equality and that of nullity on the one hand and of omnipotence and sole active participation on the other, there is a range of stages which the events of world history have filled in rich variety. A universal survey of the various institutions of justice and injustice is here an essential presupposition”. (p 197)

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Forward To Part 20

Gary More Or Less Nails It On House Prices

I watched this video by Gary Stevenson (Gary's Economics), last night, which after about 10 minutes of intro, more or less nails the real reason why house prices are high, as I have described over at least the last 20 years, even before I started writing this blog.  That reason, as I have set out, and as Gary states in his video, has nothing to do with all of the usual superficial claims by politicians, journalists, and many orthodox economists (I say many, because assorted Austrian School economists have actually been distinguished by recognising the claims of inadequate supply etc. are not supported by the facts - there is actually 50% more homes per capita today than there was in the 1970's, when prices were much lower) about, imbalances of supply and demand, planning regulations and so on.  The real reason, is that ALL asset prices have been inflated over the last 40 years, and houses/property/land has become a speculative asset, just like fictitious capital (shares, bonds, mortgages, and their derivatives).  We have huge speculative asset price bubbles in all these spheres, starting in the 1980's, so the current house price bubble is just a symptom of it.

As Gary says in his video, the basis of that is that, if you give rich people money (he should really say, in this context, money tokens/currency/credit/liquidity) they will spend it, mostly, not on consumption, but on buying assets, and, currently, that means buying, mostly existing assets, i.e. existing shares, bonds, land, property.

Its only in that context that this huge amount of liquidity, landing in the hands of the rich leads to a rise in prices, as this demand for assets rockets compared to a limited existing supply.  This huge rise in those asset prices, with no equivalent rise in the revenues produced by those assets, inevitably means that the yields on those assets falls.  As I've set out before, shareholders, because they have control over companies they do not own, as a result of existing company law, were able to compensate for that by continually raising the proportion of profits paid to them as dividends/interest.  Haldane documented it as rising from 10% in the 1970's, to 70%, by the 2000's.  But, its pretty much reached a limit.

As I've set out before, inflated existing house prices (and existing houses comprise around 70% of all the houses that are bought and sold, just as the large majority of shares traded are existing shares, not new shares issued to finance real investment in capital), mean that builders of new houses make large surplus profits, selling them at these price.  As with all such surplus profit from activities based on land that is monopolised, those surplus profits, then form rent for the landowner.  Its on reason that there was an attempt to hold down house prices by selling them as leasehold rather than freehold.  But, for houses sold freehold, the rent simply becomes capitalised as the price of the land.  So, again, we see that the main reason that the price of new houses is high, is because land prices are high, and land prices are high, because existing house prices are high, creating surplus profits/rent.  Builders have to pay these much higher land prices to landowners, before they can even start building, and that is far more significant than any issue of planning restrictions.  The reason that existing property prices are high is because, like all other asset prices, they have been inflated over the last 40 years.

Gary is quite right in setting out that this inflation of asset prices is due to the demand coming for them from the rich, and that additional demand from the rich is a function of a growth in inequality.  I pointed out a long time ago that the QE and other liquidity injections by central banks that they claimed was to spur economic growth, was actually doing the opposite.  If the state and central banks had really wanted to encourage economic growth, they would not have combined QE with measures of fiscal austerity!  Increasing liquidity, as was seen after lockdowns, does cause inflation of commodity prices, where that liquidity lands in the hands of households, who spend it on consumption goods and services, particularly where they have been prevented from doing so, and where supply can't quickly respond to the surge in demand.  But, for forty years since the 1980's, the increase in liquidity went primarily to the rich, not to workers.  In fact, workers found their wages falling, and were led into additional borrowing, as seen in the surge in household debt.  So, QE, introduced because rising interest rates in the early 2000's caused asset prices to crash in 2000 and 2007/8, simply put more liquidity in the hands of the rich, causing asset prices to rise further, and as that proved an easier guaranteed bet than actually investing in real capital accumulation, it acted to drain liquidity from the real economy, causing economic growth to be slowed not accelerated.

The only criticism I'd make about Gary's account is that he doesn't really address the basis of the inequality, which, as I've set out in numerous posts, including those on Anti-Duhring, is a consequence of the ownership and control of the means of production.  In the past, for example, in the 18th and 19th centuries, if you put more money or liquidity in the hands of the rich, who were primarily private industrial capitalists, Gary's argument, mostly would not apply.  Those private industrial capitalists derived their revenues from profits, and as Marx sets out, in Capital III, Chapter 15, their primary driver was to use whatever money they had to accumulate additional capital (factories, machines, material, labour-power), so as to produce more profits, to produce on a larger scale, because that was how to beat the competition and stay in business.

"... the capitalist process of production consists essentially of the production of surplus-value, represented in the surplus-product or that aliquot portion of the produced commodities materialising unpaid labour. It must never be forgotten that the production of this surplus-value — and the reconversion of a portion of it into capital, or the accumulation, forms an integral part of this production of surplus-value — is the immediate purpose and compelling motive of capitalist production. It will never do, therefore, to represent capitalist production as something which it is not, namely as production whose immediate purpose is enjoyment or the manufacture of the means of enjoyment for the capitalist. This would be overlooking its specific character, which is revealed in all its inner essence."

Even then, of course, there were those who thought that wealth could be created out of thin air by simply printing "money", such as John Law and The Pereire Brothers, with their version of QE, or MMT, which led to speculative asset price bubbles, such as The South Sea Bubble, The Mississippi Scheme and so on, followed by the inevitable asset price crash.  There were also those who engaged in the purchase of physical assets, such Tulip bulbs, creating an asset price bubble like that with Bitcoin, today, except that tulip bulbs have value, and Bitcoin does not.  But, generally, Marx's point was correct that, as far as the industrial capitalists were concerned, they needed more profits, more money so as to engage in real investment in capital, so as to make more profits, so as invest in more real capital.

That is not true, today, because the era of that ruling-class comprised of private industrial capitalists has ended.  The ruling-class, today, is not one comprising individual, private owners of real industrial capital (they now comprise the petty-bourgeoisie) but of owners of fictitious-capital, and their revenues come not, directly, from realised industrial profits, but from interest/dividends on their financial assets, from rents on property, and from realised capital gains on those assets.  Hence their concern not to have asset prices crash, and consequently, not to have economic growth rise too fast, leading to rising interest rates, which lead to the crash in asset prices.

If you want to address the highly inflated price of assets, which is, indeed, as Gary says, a function of the inequality of wealth and income, you have to address that inequality, but, you can't address that inequality by various measures of redistribution, taxation, benefits and so on.  It can only be addressed by dealing with The Property Question, i.e. the ownership and control of the means of production.  That is all the more pressing, precisely because those means of production - socialised capital - is the collective property of workers, and yet those workers are not allowed to exercise control over their own property.  That control is exercised, instead, by shareholders via their appointed Directors.  Those Director, and the share holders they represent have no direct interest in accumulating additional capital, as against "maximising shareholder value", which basically means, inflating dividends, inflating share prices and so on.

That is The Property Question that must be addressed.

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, I - Subject Matter and Method - Part 18 of 20

“But we see too that if Herr Dühring does not want to be unfaithful to the basic principles “established” by him in his interpretation of morals, law and history, he must deny this elementary economic fact, especially if he is to smuggle his indispensable twosome into economics. This great event can come to pass once distribution has been happily released from all connection with production and exchange,.” (p 195-6)

And, that, too, is the position of social-democracy, and reformist socialism. In fact, if shareholders did not control the industrial capital, which is the collective property of the workers – associated producers – they would still be entitled to revenues, in the form of dividends, but those dividends would, then, reflect only a competitive market rate of interest. If workers used the profits they produced to accumulate additional capital, rather than paying excessive dividends to shareholders, and excessive payments to the executives appointed by those shareholders, then share prices, and other massively inflated asset prices would fall significantly.

The role of the ruling-class as suppliers of money-capital would, also, quickly disappear, as the role of the landlords in production disappeared, with the rise of the capitalist farmer. But, the landlords did not voluntarily give up their revenues, or their control of the state, and nor will the ruling-class of capitalist money-lenders and speculators. It is why they have used their control of the state, everywhere, to give them control over the capital they do not own.

Engels refers back to how Duhring sets out his theory in relation to these laws and morals. He starts with an Adam, alone and without original sin, but, then, along comes another Adam.

“And Adam instantly acquires obligations and—breaks them. Instead of clasping his brother to his bosom as his equal in rights, he subjects him to his domination, he enslaves him—and it is the consequences of this first sin, the original sin of enslavement, from which the whole of world history has suffered down to the present day—which is also precisely why according to Herr Dühring it is not worth threepence.” (p 196)

There are obvious problems with this narrative, besides those already discussed, earlier, by Engels. If the two Adams are equal, how does one overpower and subjugate the other? Either, it requires an assumption of inequality to begin with, or it requires a three person society, so that two subjugate the other one. But, then, a look at class societies shows the ruling-class is invariably a small minority, not a majority. Moreover, even if the two subjugate the third, for what benefit unless the third is so productive that they are able not only to reproduce their own labour-power, but also to provide for the needs of the other two?

Engels quotes Duhring's transference of this morality tale into the realm of economics, in which the role of Adam is now undertaken by Robinson Crusoe.

“If need be, we can get an appropriate conceptual schema for the idea of production from the conception of a Robinson Crusoe who is facing nature alone with his own resources and has nobody else to share anything with ... The conceptual schema of two persons who combine their economic forces and must evidently come to some form of mutual understanding as to their respective shares, is equally appropriate for the illustration of what is most essential for the idea of distribution.” (p 197)

Back To Part 17

Forward To Part 19

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, I - Subject Matter and Method - Part 17 of 20

In the era of the monopoly of private capital, the capitalist obtains profit from their ownership of industrial capital, and this forms the basis of distribution – profit to the industrial capitalist, wages to the worker, interest to the money-lending capitalist, rent to the landlord, taxes to the state. As Marx sets out in Capital I and III, and in Theories of Surplus Value, the primary relation is that between capital and labour. It determines the average annual rate of surplus value, and, thereby, the average annual rate of profit, and, its only once that is determined that, rent – surplus profit – can be established, and also, that the value of capital as, now, a commodity, can be established, which is necessary in determining the rate of interest.

Surplus profit is profit in excess of the average profit. This surplus profit is usually competed away, in relation to industrial capital, but, where it depends upon the monopoly ownership of one factor of production, e.g. land, that is not possible. The owners of that factor, e.g. landlords, are able to charge a rent for use of it, up to and including the amount of the surplus profit. The value of capital, as a commodity, is equal to the average rate of profit. A machine, as a commodity, may have a value of £100, but, used as capital, this £100 machine has a value of £120, if the average rate of profit is 20%. So, the owner of the machine might loan it to a producer for a year, and charge them interest of anything up to £20.

All of these distribution relations, therefore, flow from the productive relation between capital and labour. As Marx sets out, in Capital III, in the era of the monopoly of private capital, the individual capitalist often embodied in themselves all of these owners of factors of production. They used their own money-capital to buy the land used for production; they bought the buildings, materials, machines and labour-power, and sometimes, contributed their own labour-power too. That situation, today, in the era of socialised capital/imperialism, is confined to the relics of that private capitalist production, amongst the small capitals and petty-bourgeoisie.

But, even as this era of the monopoly of private capital was in process of dissolution – the expropriation of the expropriators – it saw a middle-class of professional managers arise as “functioning capitalists”. Originally, they are employed by the private capitalist, as the scale of production expands beyond the capacity of a single capitalist. But, then, as credit develops, these managers themselves take over, or establish their own business, even though they own no capital themselves. They simply perform the social role of functioning capitalist, and borrow the required money-capital from banks, or obtain credit from suppliers etc. The profit is produced, as before, but, now, they must deduct from it the interest on the money borrowed, the rent to the landlord, and only what is left constitutes the profit of enterprise, available for capital accumulation.

In practice, these functioning capitalists would, also, supplement their own managerial salaries out of this profit of enterprise. And, finally, as the scale of capitalist production expands to such a scale that it requires the mobilisation of capital on a huge scale, as happened from the start of the railways, it can only take the form of a joint stock company, or a large cooperative. It becomes socialised capital, and, at this point, the ruling class, itself, has been removed from the production process, altogether, and becomes only a supplier of money-capital. It is this new relation that determines the new distribution relations, as it obtains its revenues, now, not from profit or profit of enterprise, not from ownership of industrial capital, but from interest/dividends and capital gains, i.e. from its ownership of fictitious capital, and it maintains this position via its control of the capitalist state.

Back To Part 16

Forward To Part 18

Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, I - Subject Matter and Method - Part 16 of 20

As Engels notes, here, we also have the return of Duhring's two-person society.

“But it is still more, it is the basic theme of Herr Dühring's whole book. In the sphere of law, Herr Dühring could offer us nothing save a bad translation of Rousseau's theory of equality into the language of socialism, such as one has long been able to hear on a far higher level in any workers’ tavern in Paris. Now he gives us an equally bad socialist translation of the economists’ laments over the distortion of the eternal economic laws of nature and of their effects through the intervention of the state, of force. In this Herr Dühring deservedly stands quite alone among socialists. Every socialist worker, of whatever nationality knows quite well that force only protects exploitation, but does not cause it; that the relation between capital and wage-labour is the basis of his exploitation, and that this arose from purely economic causes and not at all by means of force.” (p 194-5)

In fact, what Engels took for granted, here, is not so easily taken for granted, today, even within the ranks of supposed “Marxists”. Today, much of the “Left” is concerned with the coercive power of monopolies, just as with its extension, with theories of imperialism based on the ideas of “unequal exchange”, “super exploitation” and so on. It is a triumph of the ideas of Sismondi and Proudhon, also contained in the ideas of Duhring, over the ideas of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, but camouflaging itself in the clothes of the latter.

Engels quotes Duhring's statement.

“in all economic questions “two processes, that of production and that of distribution, can be distinguished”. Also that the notoriously superficial J. B. Say added yet a third process, that of use, of consumption, but that he was unable to say anything sensible about it, any more than his successors; but that exchange or circulation is only a department of production, which comprises all the operations required for the products to reach the final and actual consumers.” (p 195)

Engels comments,

“By confounding the two processes of production and circulation, which though conditioning each other are essentially different, and unblushingly asserting that the avoidance of this confusion can only “give rise to confusion”, Herr Dühring merely shows that he either does not know or does not understand the colossal development which this very process of circulation has undergone during the last fifty years, as indeed is further borne out by the rest of his book.” (p 195)

Marx and Engels set out this distinction and conditioning in Capital II, and III. I have, also, referred to it, earlier. In Capital II, Marx and Engels set out the distinction between Production Time and Circulation Time, in reference to the circuit of industrial capital, an its rate of turnover. The commodity producer creates the value of the commodity, during its production, but they cannot realise this value until it is sold. They must take it to market and sell it, and this time, required to sell the commodity, at market, and, then, to be able to utilise the money as money-capital to buy, and, thereby, replace the consumed productive-capital, is its circulation time.

The time spent in circulation is time the producer could have been using to produce more commodities, but it does not add any new value. This additional cost, thereby, reduces the amount of realised profit, and must be minimised. Hence, commercial capital takes on this role. As wholesalers and retailers, they specialise in this activity, and obtain the benefits of specialisation and economies of scale. The same is true of money-dealing capital. Both reduce the costs of circulation and speed up the turnover of capital. They create no surplus value, but, as Marx sets out, in Capital III, Chapter 17, they increase the mass of realised profit, and by raising the rate of turnover, raise the average annual rate of profit. Its on this basis that commercial capital, as an element of industrial capital, shares in that average profit.

“After lumping production and exchange together into production as such, he puts distribution alongside production, as a second, wholly external process, which has nothing whatever to do with the first. Now we have seen that in its decisive features distribution is always the necessary result of the relations of production and exchange in a particular society, as well as of the historical preconditions of this society; so much so that when we know these relations and preconditions we can definitely infer the prevailing mode of distribution in this society.” (p 195)

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Forward To Part 17