If we consider Distribution, it is also determined by the mode of production. In the primitive commune, production is a collective, cooperative act, and so is the distribution of the product. All are equally involved in production, and consequently, the product is distributed on a correspondingly egalitarian basis. Under slavery, the whole of production is the property of the slave owner, but they must distribute this product, still, within the confines of given economic laws. Firstly, a part of the product must go to replace the means of production used up in that production (the equivalent of constant capital), secondly, they must hand back to the slaves a part of the product, in order that the slaves may live and reproduce, so as to provide labour another day. Only after that is done can the slave owner take the surplus product for their own consumption.
Under feudalism, it is the ownership of land that is central. As with the AMP, tradition and tribute, also, play a vita role. The feudal lords and chieftains arise as military leaders of their respective tribes and clans, and, over time, establish themselves as a ruling class, on the basis of the payment of tribute. They are closely associated with religious leaders, who, also, obtain such tribute. In the AMP, the society starts from a need to undertake large-scale civil engineering works, usually related to hydraulics, for control of rivers and irrigation, or for terracing of the land. It appoints engineers and administrators for this work, and, over a very long period of time, this layer of society forms into a ruling caste. In such societies, as Barrington Moore Junior, describes, a landlord class, also, continues to exist, frequently, but the ruling caste transforms the administrative body that brought it into existence, into a state apparatus that keeps it in existence, and enables it to appropriate tribute.
If tech companies that own platforms for content are like virtual landlords, a state that controls the Internet access itself, is like a ruling caste.
Under capitalism, it is the ownership of capital that is central. As with slavery, industrial capital owns the entire product, but must, also, replace the consumed means of production (constant capital), as well as the consumed variable-capital (wages), out of it, before appropriating the remainder as profit, and from which it must, also, deduct interest, rent and taxes. Speaking of the primitive commune, Engels notes,
“... where a more marked inequality of distribution among the members of the community sets in, this is an indication that the community is already beginning to break up.” (p 188)
In The Origin of The Family, Private Property and The State, Engels gives a description of the material conditions that lead to this growing inequality.
“Both large- and small-scale agriculture admit of very diverse forms of distribution, according to the historical preconditions from which they developed. But it is clear that large-scale farming always entails a distribution which is quite different from that in small-scale farming; that the former presupposes or creates a class antagonism—slave-owners and slaves, feudal lords and serfs, capitalists and wage-workers—while the latter by no means entails class differences between the individuals engaged in agricultural production, and that on the contrary the mere existence of such differences indicates the incipient decline of smallholding economy.” (p 188)
In practice, no society has a single mode of production, only a dominant mode of production, to which all other production and distribution is subordinated. In the Roman Empire, for example, it was a slave society, with the main distinction being between freeman and slave. But, the proportion of slaves was relatively small, at around 30%. The majority of society was comprised of peasant producers. The Roman Empire also relied on the pillage of other societies, as it spread across Europe and the Middle-East.
The United States arose, already, on the basis of capitalist production, transplanted from Western Europe. But, as Marx describes, in The Poverty of Philosophy, its industrial development could not have occurred without the existence of slavery, in the Southern States.
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