When the nobility lost its social function, the bourgeois ideologists argued that there was no basis for the continuation of its revenues, i.e. ground-rent, which was a drain on profits, and so on capital accumulation. If land was nationalised, the bourgeoisie argued, the state would be the recipient of such rent, thereby, reducing its need to levy taxes to cover the cost of its expenses. In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx notes that this same idea was, then, put forward by some early working-class representatives, in relation to the payment of interest. As Marx notes, however, whilst the state could be the provider of loanable money-capital, and recipient of interest, the fact that this would displace the remaining function of the ruling-class is tantamount to the end of capitalism itself, an eventuality that the ruling-class would be bound to resist with all its means.
When the industrial bourgeoisie arose as an entirely new class, and alongside it the industrial proletariat, this occurred, not as a result of some deliberate plan or of conscious will, but spontaneously, as a consequence of purely economic processes. Serfs and retainers who moved to the towns, in the Middle Ages, needed to provide a living for themselves, and so became small, independent commodity producers and traders. Of itself, as Lenin describes, and also, Marx describes in Theories of Surplus Value, this leads to an expansion of the market, alongside which goes a growing social division of labour, and the realm of exchange-value. A market means competition, and competition means winners and losers – a differentiation into an urban bourgeoisie and proletariat.
But, as Marx sets out, in Capital III, the same applies to the social function of the private capitalists, and their expropriation by socialised capital, as the collective property of the workers. Competition leads to the creation of small private capitals, which expropriate the independent commodity producers. The small private capitals are expropriated, as a result of the same process, by larger private capitals, but these are, then, swallowed by the huge socialised capitals – the expropriation of the expropriators. The private capitalists are driven out to become mere coupon-clippers, owners of fictitious-capital, again, simply as a result of these economic processes. They become redundant, and a drag on the further development of capital, but, just as formerly, with the nobility, they cling to their control of the political regime, and use it to protect their position, thereby, damaging the further rational development of capital. The economic relations have outgrown the political/juridical relations, which must be resolved by a political revolution.
“... this result established itself with irresistible force, against the will and contrary to the intentions of the bourgeoisie; its own productive forces have grown beyond its control, and, as if by a necessity of nature, are driving the whole of bourgeois society towards ruin or towards revolution.” (p 211)
The bourgeoisie, as ruling-class, in those first developed economies, was, by its nature, a national bourgeoisie, and the state it created was a nation state. But, by the end of the 19th century, the capital was large-scale, socialised capital, formed into large oligopolies, trusts and corporations. On the one hand, as described in Capital III, this required intervention and regulation by the capitalist state, for the benefit of capital, and of society as a whole. On the other hand, the huge scale of this capital, and its long time horizons for investment, requires the planning regulation and standardisation within each enterprise to be extended to the economy as a whole, a function which only the state could perform.
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