Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy, I - Subject Matter and Method - Part 14 of 20

In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx, also, explained the different material conditions existing in France, as against Britain, that determined the nature of the theories of the Physiocrats, compared to those of the first English political economists such as Steuart and Petty. In France, it is productive capital, on the land that provides the basis for the ideas of the Physiocrats. They see it in physical terms of a quantity of use-values as inputs, at one end, and the output of a greater quantity of use-values, at the other end. They, correctly, see the surplus product/profit arising in production, but, wrongly, attribute its source to being the land. They consequently see the form of the surplus-value being not profit, but rent.  As Britain took over from the Netherlands as the leading trading nation, it was not surprising that it was this act of exchange that was seen as the source of profit, as set out in the ideas of the Mercantilists.

Adam Smith and, then, Ricardo, arising at the time that Britain goes through the Industrial Revolution, is able to take the ideas of the Physiocrats, of production leading to a greater quantity of outputs, and to see that it applies to all production, and not just agriculture. Where the Physiocrats saw only agricultural labour as productive, Smith sees all labour as productive, and he, also, sees that the surplus arising in production is not only a surplus product, but is, also, a surplus value, though he still does not properly understand its nature.  Unfortunately, as Marx also sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 4, et al, Smith defines "productive" labour itself in different, contradictory ways.  His advance over the Physiocrats, here, is in recognising all labour, as productive of value, i.e. the essence and measure of value, not just agricultural labour.

“What we have said of the philosophers is also true of the economists of that time. To them, the new science was not the expression of the conditions and needs of their epoch, but the expression of eternal reason; the laws of production and exchange it discovered were not laws of a historically determined form of those activities, but eternal laws of nature; they were deduced from the nature of man. But, when examined more closely, this man proved to be the average burgher of that epoch, on the way to becoming a bourgeois, and his nature consisted in manufacturing and trading in accordance with the historically determined conditions of that period.” (p 192-3)

For Duhring, however, his treatment of political economy, as with Nature, is one in which he seeks to assert the existence of these eternal laws and absolute truths. And, he has the same problem with political economy that he had with Nature, which is that he is unable to provide any laws of motion from one state to another. As will be seen in the next sections, and as has already been alluded to, in his treatment of laws and morals, his solution to this is “force”, the physical subjection, in his schema, of part of society by another.

“Social relations such as morality and law were determined, not by the actual historical conditions of the age, but by the famous twosome, one of whom either oppresses the other or does not oppress the other, the latter sad to say, never having yet come to pass. We are therefore hardly likely to go astray if we conclude that Herr Dühring will also trace political economy back to final and ultimate truths, eternal natural laws of nature, and the most empty and dreary tautological axioms; that nevertheless he will again smuggle in by the backdoor the whole positive content of political economy, so far as this is known to him; and that he will not evolve distribution, as a social phenomenon, out of production and exchange, but will hand it over to his glorious twosome for final solution.” (p 193)

This concept, separating out distribution from production was a feature of the vulgar economist, as described by Marx in The Critique of The Gotha Programme. It is a fundamental element of social-democracy, and reformist ideology, including of “Left” reformists. For more than a century, that ideology has suggested that the condition of the working-class, in terms of its exploitation, and the existence of inequality, could be resolved in the realm of distribution. Simply improve trades union rights, strengthen workers bargaining power, and their relative wages would rise; elect Labour governments, which raise taxes on higher incomes, and use the revenues to improve benefits, pensions and public services, and all would be well, so this story went. Instead, inequality continued to grow, in particular, the inequality of wealth.

Of course, living standards, on average, rose, but that was a consequence of rising labour productivity, as new technologies were developed. But, absolute rises in real wages/living standards went along with increased relative profits, increased exploitation of labour. And, of course, at times inequality declined, because, at times, capital accumulates extensively, rather than intensively, so that labour shortages arise, and so relative wages rise, as occurred in the 1960's and 70's. But, that rise in relative wages and consequent profits squeeze, results in a crisis of overproduction of capital. Capital responds by a technological revolution that displaces labour. Relative wages fall again, now to a level lower than they were before, even as living standards rise. And, for many, displaced in the process, living standards, also, fall dramatically.

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