The consequence of this social position of the bourgeoisie was that its ideas pervaded society. Its ideas, indeed its members, increasingly occupied the functional roles in the state itself, in the churches, the universities, schools and colleges, in the newspapers, as well as the permanent state bureaucracy. Even as the nobility occupied the political regime, represented by the Court or Parliament, the state, itself, became a bourgeois state, whose future depended upon the free and rapid development of capitalist production.
“The burghers' revolution put an end to this. Not, however, by adapting the economic situation to the political conditions, in accordance with Herr Dühring’s principle—this was precisely what the nobility and the crown had been vainly trying to do for years—but on the contrary, by casting aside the old mouldering political rubbish and creating political conditions in which the new “economic situation” could continue and develop.” p 210)
And this, of course, is why Marxists viewed the bourgeois-democratic, national revolution, of the 18th and 19th century, as progressive. Not because of any liberal, moralistic belief in bourgeois-democracy, or the right of national self-determination, but, solely, because, at that time, the bourgeois-democratic nation state represented the rational form required, as a minimum, for this free and rapid development of capitalism. And why did Marxists see that as progressive, and, therefore, to be desired? Because it brought with it the development, also, of the industrial proletariat, and of the development of the productive forces to a level whereby Socialism becomes possible.
“And it did develop brilliantly in this political and legal atmosphere suited to its needs, so brilliantly that the bourgeoisie has already approached the position held by the nobility in 1789: it is becoming not only socially superfluous, but a social hindrance; it is increasingly abandoning productive activity, and, like the nobility in the past, increasingly becoming a merely revenue-pocketing class;” (p 210)
The significance of this can be seen by comparing the actual transformation of the bourgeoisie into this merely "revenue-pocketing class", i.e. coupon-clippers, as against Marx's description of the nature of capital itself, in Capital III, Chapter 15.
“And 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 integrate 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.”
The ruling-class, as a class, now, of "revenue-pocketing", coupon-clippers, financial gamblers, as owners of fictitious-capital, no longer represent the interests of capital itself, and represent a fetter on its further development. I have, previously described the significance of this, and Engels sets it out, also, at the end of his book. By the end of the 19th century, this process, by which the bourgeoisie had become a socially superfluous, revenue-pocketing class, was more or less complete. The role of functioning capitalist had been taken over by a growing army of middle-class, professional managers, technicians and administrators, drawn from the ranks of the working-class, and facilitated by the expansion of “free”, public education. Individually, they owned no capital, even as they managed ever larger masses of it. The industrial capital, itself, in the form of cooperatives and corporations, became socialised capital, which is, objectively, the collective property of the associated producers within the company (the workers and managers).
The ruling-class, like the nobility before them, no longer had a social function, but clung to their position as ruling-class, and control of the state. Their role became one of simply money-lenders, owners of fictitious-capital – shares and bonds – from which they derive interest/dividends and speculative capital gains. As Marx describes, in Capital III, this fictitious-capital, and consequently the ruing-class, itself, now stands in an antagonistic relationship to the real capital, and, consequently, to the capitalist system itself! It acts as the nobility did before it, like a succubus, draining the lifeblood from capital via its revenues, which it uses unproductively, and even destructively, as it fuels speculative asset price bubbles, which subsequently burst.
The swelling middle-class of professional managers, technicians, administrators and bureaucrats have their equivalents in the trades unions and social-democratic parties, as well as in the ranks of the permanent state, be they as civil servants, teachers, lecturers and so on. The ideas arising from these new economic forms and social relations, and represented by the social function of this new middle-class strata, are those of social-democracy, as defined by Marx in The Eighteenth Brumaire.
“The peculiar character of social-democracy is epitomized in the fact that democratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means, not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transforming it into harmony.”
It takes as its basis, in the 19th century, the Ricardian notions of the identity of interest between capital and labour, requiring only a negotiation, between the two, over the distribution of the spoils, but, always assuming the primacy of capital. This bargaining role is the social function of the middle-class layer of managers on the one hand, and the trades union bureaucracy on the other.
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