Friday, 31 October 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part II: Political Economy, VI. Simple and Compound Labour - Part 1 of 8
The failure to distinguish between labour as the essence and measure of value, and labour-power, which is a use-value, and, under capitalism, sold, by the worker as a commodity, leads to several errors. It leads to the nonsensical idea of “the value of labour”, whereas labour has no value. What has value is not labour but labour-power. The value of labour-power is determined by the labour-time required for its reproduction, i.e. to reproduce the labourer. Labour itself has no value. It is not a thing, but a process, it is the creator and measure of value. Not only are labour and labour-power two completely different things, but they have no necessary relation to each other.
The value of labour-power may be relatively high, and yet the labour performed by the supplier of that labour-power may produce relatively little new value. For example, a labourer in an undeveloped economy, where productivity is low, will need to spend a large part of the day just to reproduce their own labour-power, even though their standard of living may be low compared to that of workers in a developed economy, where productivity is high.
By equating labour-power with labour, and the value of labour-power with the value created by labour, the fallacy is created that the value of commodities is, thereby, determined by the value of labour-power, or its phenomenal form – wages. This is the basis of the false claim by vulgar and bourgeois economists that wage rises cause price rises, also falsely presented as “inflation”.
Another aspect of this is in relation to simple and complex labour. Marx described simple labour as that unskilled, factory labour that anyone can perform. The most obvious expression of that is machine-minding labour. It does not matter whether the machine being minded is one that automatically spins yarn, weaves cloth, or produces envelopes. The labourer is there only to feed the raw material into it, clean it periodically, and ensure it is working. Consequently, a labourer can move from minding a spinning machine to minding an envelope producing machine with no significant additional requirement for skill or training.
That does not mean that every worker engaged in such activity is the same, or that their labour produces the same amount of new value. Even with this simple labour, some workers will be more adept at feeding the machine and so on, so that, in the course of a day, one may produce more than another. But, taken in aggregate, it is this simple labour that forms the basis of the measurement of the new value created.
But, clearly, not all labour performed is of this type. There is, also, skilled and semi-skilled labour. A carpenter does not mind machines. They use tools, and rely on their own acquired skill to produce furniture, construct doors, roof structures and so on. Their labour is not only, clearly, different to that of the machine minder, but, also, that of other skilled labourers, for example, that of the engineer or jeweller. Not only is it not possible for a carpenter to just become an engineer or jeweller, but the value created by their labour is, also, not directly comparable to, or reducible to that created by the labour of the engineer or jeweller. And yet this comparison does take place, and must take place, in order that the value of the products of these different types of labour can be determined, and so the basis of their exchange as commodities is established.
Nor is this a function of the value of their labour-power, any more than the value created by simple labour is determined by the value of the labour-power of the machine minder. The value of the labour-power of a carpenter, engineer or jeweller may be higher than that of a machine minder, because they require additional time and training to acquire their skills. Yet, the value of the labour-power of a carpenter, engineer and jeweller may still be the same, whilst the value of the product of their labour may be entirely different. It is only when these different types of skilled labour confront each other, as commodities, in the market, that these actual relative proportions can be determined.
Thursday, 30 October 2025
Productivity, Pensions and Profits
Last Saturday, when we were out dancing, my sister asked me a question, which was “With all of the self-checkouts in supermarkets, replacing workers, who is gong to pay the taxes to cover pensions?”. I've dealt with this question before, including recently, but given that I had to keep the answer as brief and as simple as possible, given the conditions of my reply, and competing with the backbeat of Northern Soul, and, given that my sister quickly grasped the gist of that reply, I thought it worthwhile, basically, setting it out, here.
The first thing, which most people don't easily grasp, is its not a question of “money”, and so, also, not a question of people paying taxes or National Insurance. You don't eat, drink, wear or live in money, but the things that money buys – food, clothes, houses. The same cause of the checkout workers losing their jobs, the introduction of technology to replace them, in other words a rise in productivity – more things being produced for any given amount of labour – is the same cause of the unit value of all those things being reduced, and, also, thereby, means that society is able to produce all those things that its members need to consume – whether they are working, retired, still at school, or sick – with fewer of them actually producing those things. Its why, today, workers across the world produce far more “things”, including services such as education, health and social care, entertainment and so on, than is proportional to the increase in the global workforce.
Its also why, the first groups of people in society to realise this fact, were the ruling-class. As soon as the labourers in any society are able to produce more “stuff” than they require for their own necessary consumption, it means that a small group in society – the ruling-class – can consume that surplus of “stuff” without themselves working. These ruling-classes – at different times, slave-owners, feudal landowners, and now capitalists – over the millennia, have been able to appropriate ever vaster amounts of this “stuff”. At one time, it was the building of pyramids stuffed with gold, and, today, its capitalists with several multi-million pound yachts, jets, private islands, spacecraft and so on, not to mention trillions of Dollars of fictitious wealth in the form of shares, bonds and so on.
As I recently noted, in relation to the attacks on pensions in France, and as explained by Robert Owen, 200 years ago, its not a question of workers not being able to produce all of the increase in the quantity of goods and services required to enable them to have higher living standards, including retiring earlier, having shorter working weeks, more holidays and so on, because the rise in labour productivity has, already been far in excess of what is required for that.
Owen realised, at his factory,
“... the working part of this population of 2,500 persons was producing as much real wealth for society, as, less than half a century before, it would have required the working part of a population of 600,000 to create. I asked myself what became of the difference between the wealth consumed by 2,500 persons and that which would have been consumed by 600,000.”
The answer was that, the workers producing all of that increase in real wealth – in that case textiles – was not being used to benefit the workers producing it – although he did provide his workers with better wages, conditions, places to live, schools and so on – but was going to the capitalists who loaned the money to the business. There's two ways that can become manifest. Firstly, the capitalists can just consume more of those additional “things”, including all those things required to produce more “things”. In other words, they can increase their own standard of living, and they can increase the size of their capital, the size of their business, or, in the case of money lending capitalists, the amount of money they have available to lend out, and so obtain interest/dividends and so on.
In that earlier post, I set out the rise in productivity in recent times, which shows the same thing that Owen described, and extent to which workers have already covered, by it, the fact that they are living slightly longer, to be able to enjoy their retirement. Think about something like the Channel Tunnel. If it had to be dug by navvies using picks and shovels, it would never have been built, it was the use of tunnel boring machines that made it economic to undertake. The problem is not that workers are living longer, nor that workers are being replaced by machines, leaving fewer of them to pay taxes to cover spending on pensions.
The problem is that the distribution of the real wealth – all of the actual “stuff” - created by workers, is skewed in favour of a tiny number of very rich capitalists, and their states, who also waste large amounts of it in the form of arms spending, fighting wars and so on. The global ruling class, comprises less than 0.1% of the population. This 0.1% has more net wealth than the bottom 50% of the population, and yet it is this bottom 50%, along with much of the remaining 49.9%, that actually produces all of the wealth in the first place, including all of the machines and other technology that is used to replace them!
Elon Musk has net wealth of $450 billion. If he just gets 1% a year interest on that wealth, it gives him $4.5 billion each and every year, with no need to work or do anything else. That rather puts into perspective the claims about the problem being workers living longer, by a few years, or a few of them claiming a few quid of benefits, let alone a few thousand desperate refugees risking their lives in boats to cross the English Channel. For the ruling-class who appropriate billions each year, it is, of course, very useful for their media to talk every day about a handful of desperate migrants rather than the parasites of the ruling class. Far better to have daily news reports about a migrant who tried to kiss a girl than continued discussion of Prince Andrew and his friends such as Epstein, Trump etc., and their activities.
When the economy was characterised by private capitalists who owned firms, they got their revenues in the form of profits. Because each firm has to compete to stay in business, and because the best way to compete is to operate on a larger scale, to get economies of scale, each capitalist was led to plough their profits back into the business. But, that is no longer the case. The economy is no longer characterised by such privately owned capital, despite the fact that there are around 5 million privately owned small businesses, and self-employed.
The economy is dominated by huge corporations, and these corporations are not privately owned capitals. They, in fact, belong, collectively, to the workers within them. They are socialised capitals. But, those workers are not allowed to control them, just as workers are not allowed to control the money in their own pension funds, whether their company pension funds, or the state pension fund. (In fact, Rachel Reeves wants to use the latter to pump more money into risky ventures, currently, so as to inflate share prices once more, much as has happened in the past, in 1929, 1987, and 2008 ahead of big stock market crashes, as Andrew Ross Sorkin has described.
Instead, control is given to shareholders, which is like giving control of your house to a mortgage lender just because they gave you a mortgage! So, these shareholders, unlike the private industrial capitalists of the 18th and 19th century, have no such objective requirement to plough profits back into the company, to expand it. The company itself still has such a requirement. The workers in the company, including the workers who, nowadays, perform all the functions of the old private capitalists, that is the production managers, sales managers, purchasing managers, administrators, technicians and so on, still have an interest in such expansion, but, not, necessarily, the shareholders, which is why the shareholders have made sure they keep control, and, also, that they appoint boards of directors whose job it is to protect their interests, rather than the interest of the company.
Unlike the old private industrial capitalists, the shareholders have an interest in draining out as much in interest/dividends as possible, and, also, of inflating the share price, which has become the basis of their paper wealth over the last 40 years. This is important in, also, answering the question, asked by Owen, when applied to today, of where has all of the increased wealth gone? If there has been all of the increase in productivity mentioned earlier, where has all of the resultant “stuff” produced gone? Why has it not shown up as an increased ability to produce all of the schools, hospitals, roads and so on that was seen in past times when productivity rose significantly, such as after WWII? Why, instead, do we have roads reverting back to the potholed dirt tracks of the pre-industrial age, schools and hospitals falling into ruins and so on?
In fact, for the last 200 or so years, whenever there has been a big rise in productivity, it first goes along with a period of relative stagnation, of the economy growing at a slower pace than average. The reason is simple. Capitalists introduce labour-saving technology, because a relative shortage of labour had arisen that caused wages to rise, squeezing profits – an overproduction of capital relative to labour supply. By successfully replacing workers with machines, firms can produce the same amount of “stuff” with fewer workers, but, then, also, with wages falling, and fewer workers employed, all of their previous demand for that “stuff” falls. The capitalists grab back their share of all of that surplus “stuff”. That is the point my sister had, also, been making.
In the past, for example, in the 19th century, the capitalists took the opportunity to, also, employ domestic servants in their homes, as a result of their increased profits, and availability of workers, brought about by this rise in productivity from the introduction of machines etc. Even as the living standards of workers rise, and employment grows in such a period, firms can meet the increased demand by employing less workers than they would previously, precisely because of the rise in productivity. For example, they can decide to build a channel tunnel, because they don't need tens of thousands of navvies, but only a few thousand workers and a couple of tunnel boring machines. The point, here, though is that they do decide to build the tunnel, where previously they would not. But, firms especially, now, very large corporations that plan their investments over many years, do not willy-nilly increase their production above what they see in the market, as the demand for their products.
So, the reason we have not had a huge rise in the quantity of “stuff” to meet the modest needs of workers who live a few more years into retirement, despite the fact that productivity has risen more than enough to make that possible, and even to allow workers to retire earlier rather than later, is because those money-lending capitalists (shareholders) who have control of large companies, have chosen not to do so, and capitalist states, also, chose not to invest in infrastructure, in the same way they did, for example, after WWII. Why? Because, from the 1980's, the technological revolution of that time made them strong, and workers weak, enabling Thatcher and Reagan to beat them down. They were able to reduce the share of wealth going to workers, wealth produced by those workers, and to distribute it, instead, to shareholders, bondholders and so on.
Profits of companies rose, and a smaller proportion of those profits went to investing in additional capital, expansion of production, even though the tremendous rise in productivity brought about by the microchip revolution, did mean more “stuff” than ever before did get produced, including “stuff” never seen before, such as video recorders, personal computers and so on. A larger proportion of the money profits, therefore, went in interest/dividend payments to shareholders and bondholders. They used this money, now not needed for capital investment, to just buy up existing shares and bonds, as well as property. It caused asset prices to inflate into astronomical bubbles.
Between 1980, and 2000, the Dow Jones rose by 1300%, although US GDP rose by only 250%, and the same thing was seen in stock markets across the globe. In the 1980's, in Britain, house prices quadrupled. I bought my first house, in 1977, for cash, costing me £5,500. In 1988, I sold it for £22,500, and if I had held on to it, for another 18 months, I could have sold it for £39,000, which would have been more than the £32,000 I paid for the detached house I bought in 1988! In turn, by the time I sold that in 2010, its price had, again, quadrupled to £150,000. This was all part of a crazy asset price inflation, as all of this money went after existing assets, rather than being used to invest in real capital, and so expand production.
The extent of the craziness was shown, in 1987, when global stock markets crashed by 25%, and in 1990, when UK house prices crashed by 40%, and in Japan, property prices crashed by up to 90%, all sparked by rises in interest rates. The same was true of the crash in 2000, when technology shares dropped 75%, and, of course, in 2008 with the global financial crisis. If, instead of simply using the increased profits of companies, during that period, wastefully, to speculate in existing stock, bond and property markets those profits had been used to accumulate capital, to expand production, to produce more stuff, including more houses – rather than building more houses, Thatcher, for example, sold off council houses, and prevented councils building more to replace them – the idea that we can't produce enough “stuff” to meet the needs of pensioners, and, indeed the rest of society for decent roads, schools, hospitals and so on, would be seen for the nonsense it is. But, the decision not to use those profits in that way was a logical decision of shareholders from their own selfish perspective. They do not invest to meet the needs of society, but to maximise their own wealth. When that wealth increasingly took the form of the paper wealth of inflated share, bond and property prices, they have had to do everything possible to keep them inflated.
That is why, rather than using the vast profits they appropriated over the last forty years to invest in increased production to meet he needs of society, and to lighten the burden of labour, they have used it for speculation, and to increase their own lavish consumption. Its why shareholders should have no right to control companies they do not own, and why workers who are the real, collective owners of those companies should have that control.
Wednesday, 29 October 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. V – Theory of Value - Part 28 of 28
Marx deals with this, also, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, in relation to Ramsay, who makes the same error as the TSSI, based on the use of historic prices rather than current reproduction cost. By failing to grasp the difference between the two, and ending up with a version of a cost of production theory of value, it abandons the Labour Theory of Value, in the name of seeking to save it from a contradiction that is purely of their own construction and misunderstanding. In Theories of Surplus Value, Marx makes a similar point about the role of the Ricardians that sought to save Ricardo's system by, in practice, abandoning it.
Ramsay effectively identifies what appears to be a contradiction in the LTV, which is what is picked up on by the proponents of the TSSI, and use of historic pricing. It appears to show that where, for example, the value of the materials consumed in production has risen, this value is then transferred to the end product. So, if we have
c 1000 + v 250 + s 250 = 1500
and the value of c rises to 1200 before the end product is sold, its value rises to 1700. The capitalist has only paid, in total, 1250, leaving them an amount of profit of 450, not the 250 of surplus-value. Ramsay and the proponents of historic pricing see in this an apparent contradiction, because it appears that the source of this additional 200 of value, and surplus value is not labour, but is the constant capital itself. But, Marx explains that this is an illusion, because what appears, here, as a surplus value or profit is no such thing. It is simply a capital gain for this particular capitalist.
Moreover, as Engels notes above, in relation to wages and labour-power, and Marx notes in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, and Capital III, Chapter 47, the capitalist must physically reproduce the use values consumed in production, not simply the original value/historic price of those elements. So, as with workers' wages, if the price of the consumed materials has risen from 1000 to 1200, when these materials are replaced, the capitalist must, now, lay out 1200 not 1000 for their purchase. Out of the 1700 value of the end product, the capitalist must lay out 1200 for materials, and 250 for wages = 1450, leaving them not with 450 of profit, but only the 250 of actual surplus value. Indeed, as Marx describes, originally, the rate of profit was 250/1250 = 20%, but is now, only 250/1450 = 17.24%.
“Or on the other hand, if this production and reserve fund does in fact exist in the hands of the capitalist class, if it has in fact arisen through the accumulation of profit (for the moment we leave ground-rent out of account), then it necessarily consists of the accumulated surplus of the product of labour handed over to the capitalist class by the working class, over and above the sum of wages paid to the working class by the capitalist class. In this case, however, value is determined not by wages, but by the quantity of labour; in this case the working class hands over to the capitalist class in the product of labour a greater quantity of value than it receives from it in the payment of wages; and in this case the profit on capital, like all other forms of appropriation of the unpaid labour product of others, is explained as a simple component part of this surplus-value discovered by Marx.” (p 250)
In short, as Marx sets out in Capital II, under capitalism, the surplus product is, in aggregate, the physical equivalent of the surplus value produced by labour, and appropriated by capital, as realised in profit. The surplus product, i.e. that not required to reproduce the consumed materials, fixed capital and wages, is in the hands of the capitalists in the form of necessaries, luxuries and also of materials, fixed capital, and necessaries that can be used to expand the scale of production itself. The capitalists are able to buy the necessaries and luxuries for their own personal consumption (Department II a and b), because they have realised an equivalent amount of profit in the sale of their own commodities (Department I and II). But, in addition to that, the sale of their own commodities realises an equivalent amount of profit to that required to buy additional Department I goods (materials and fixed capital), and the additional wage goods (Department II a), required to employ the additional workers. (See Capital II, Chapter 21).
Ricardo opens his “Principles” with the clear and concise statement,
“The value of a commodity ... depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the greater or lesser compensation which is paid for that labour.“ (p 250)
The only deficiency, here, is that Ricardo does not distinguish between labour and labour-power. But, Engels notes that, in the whole of Duhring's “Course of Political Economy”, no mention of this statement is made. And, in The Critical History, we find Duhring's garbled statement,
““It is not considered” (by Ricardo) “that the greater or lesser proportion in which wages can be an allotment of the necessities(!) “must also involve ... a heterogeneous configuration of the value relationships!” (p 250)
As Engels comments, the reader can read anything into that, “and is on safest ground if he reads into it nothing at all.” (p 251)
In summary, Engels says that Duhring has served up five different varieties of value:
“the production value, which comes from nature; or the distribution value, which man’s wickedness has created and which is distinguished by the fact that it is measured by the expenditure of energy, which is not contained in it; or thirdly, the value which is measured by labour-time; or fourthly, the value which is measured by the cost of reproduction; or lastly, the value which is measured by wages. The selection is wide, the confusion complete, and the only thing left for us to do is to exclaim with Herr Dühring:
“The theory of value is the touchstone of the soundness of economic systems!”” (p 251)
Tuesday, 28 October 2025
Can A Government Run Out Of Money? - Part 7 of 9
Because Richard, like Ricardo, sees money only as currency, he likewise fails to understand this nature of capital. In conditions where there is no overproduction of capital, but where capitalism remains subject to these shorter-term, cyclical overproductions of commodities, whether resulting from disproportions or other frictional obstructions to the circuit of capital, it may be possible to cut short and so minimise the disruption, by various means of Keynesian demand management, as Mandel noted, in relation to the five recessions that occurred, in the post-war period of long-wave expansion running from 1949 to 1974. The fact that consumers may, at a given time, prefer the use-value of money as against the use-value of any of the available commodities they could buy with it, for example, changes when some new commodities become available for them to buy.
Whether that availability arises because those commodities have only just come into production, or because the rising production of those commodities, results in economies of scale that reduces their unit value, or whether, indeed, rising real wages, leave sufficient income for consumers to begin consuming them does not matter. What does matter, in these conditions, is that a partial or generalised overproduction of commodities, itself a consequence of rapidly rising productivity and output, as well as of rising real wages, which results in demand for mature products becoming sated, would result in production stopping until the glut was cleared, and, consequently, workers would be laid off, they would, in turn, have to reduce their consumption, so that overproduction – resulting from a reduction in consumption - then arises in spheres where no actual overproduction existed, i.e. under-consumption.
It was, that kind of condition that existed, for example, in the post-war period of boom, and which Keynesian demand-management was able to resolve. It was a period in which, large numbers of new consumer products were developed, and so, although commodities of one type were overproduced, the availability of new types of commodity, became the focus of demand for consumers who, otherwise, were sitting on their money.
So let me summarise what has been said up to this point, before moving on. Money is not currency/money tokens, just as a cow is not a picture of a cow. Money is the equivalent form of value, and, as such, can only be equal in value to the total value of all other commodities in the economy. From that, it can already be seen that, in terms of paying its way in the world, a country only has a limited amount of money, equal to the value of those commodities. We tend to think of that in terms of the value of commodities produced and to be exchanged each year, but, in reality, countries can and do, also, use the value of their existing assets for that purpose. In the process of the dissolution of the old landed aristocracy, it used the value of its estates, which it sold off piecemeal, having used them as collateral to borrow to fund its conspicuous consumption.
Monday, 27 October 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. V – Theory of Value - Part 27 of 28
In Capital III, Marx notes that what characterises each mode of production is the specific way in which this surplus labour is pumped from the labourer and appropriated by the exploiters. In slave society – the whole product of the slave (and the slave themselves) belongs to the slave owner, and only what is required to reproduce the slave is handed back to them as necessaries. That same relation exists under wage-slavery/capitalism, except the wage-slave is, nominally, free outside the contracted hours of employment. The wage-slave, also hands over the whole product of their labour to the capitalist, who having realised its value, hands back to the worker only that small part of it required as wages to cover their own reproduction.
In the AMP, the control of the state, and system of castes, based upon well established rules and taboos, leads to the surplus being handed to the state functionaries as tribute. Under feudalism, the serf has access to land to produce their needs for part of the week, but must perform labour on the landlord's fields for the rest of the week. The free peasant farmer similarly meets their needs from their own production, and hands over their surplus labour as rent and taxes etc.
“Historically, up to now, this fund has been the possession of a privileged class, on which along with this possession, political domination and intellectual leadership also devolved. The impending social revolution will for the first time make this social production and reserve fund—that is, the total mass of raw materials, instruments of production and means of subsistence — a real social fund, by taking its disposal away from that privileged class and transferring it to the whole of society as its common property.” (p 248-9)
Engels sets out the contradiction expressed in bourgeois theory, which was seized upon by the first representatives of the working-class, such as Hodgskin.
“It is one of two alternative courses. Either the value of commodities is determined by the costs of subsistence of the labour necessary for their production, that is, in present-day society, by wages. In this case each worker receives in his wages the value of the product of his labour; in this case the exploitation of the wage-earning class by the capitalist class is an impossibility.” (p 249)
The value of a commodity is equal to the value of the materials consumed in its production, including the wear and tear of fixed capital, plus the value added by labour in the production process. But, if that second value is equal to wages, there is nothing left for profit. That is not resolved by claiming as vulgar economics does, that the capitalist then sells the commodity above its value, i.e. moving the source of surplus value, established by Adam Smith, as being in production, into the realm of exchange.
“Let us assume that a worker's costs of subsistence in a given society can be expressed by the sum of three shillings. Then, according to the above-cited theory of the vulgar economists, the product of a day's labour has the value of three shillings. Let us now assume that the capitalist who employs this worker, adds a profit to this product, a tribute of one shilling, and sells it for four shillings. The other capitalists do the same. But from that moment the worker can no longer cover his daily needs with three shillings, but likewise requires four shillings for them. As all other conditions are assumed to have remained unchanged, the wages expressed in means of subsistence must remain the same, while the wages expressed in money must rise, namely, from three shillings to four shillings a day. What the capitalists take from the working class in the form of profit, they must give back to it in the form of wages. We are just where we were at the beginning: if wages determine value, no exploitation of the worker by the capitalist is possible.” (p 249)
In other words, the value of labour-power, and consequently wages, is determined by the use-values that the worker must consume to reproduce their labour-power. It is physically determined as a certain quantity of food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education and so on. As with a motor car, if you want it to drive 100 miles, and its fuel consumption is 50 miles per gallon, it has to have 2 gallons of fuel. It does no good to say it can only have £5 of fuel for the journey, if fuel is £5 per gallon! Similarly, it is no good looking at nominal wages in conditions where the value, or even just the price of wage goods have changed.
If the price of the given basket of wage goods now costs 4 shillings, it is no good saying that nominal wages have remained 3 shillings, because this 3 shillings will only buy 75% of the use-values physically required to reproduce labour-power. Real wages/living standards would have fallen, labour-power deteriorates, and its effective supply is reduced. This is the same point that Marx makes in Capital III, Chapter 47, in relation to the reproduction of capital as a whole. It is the physical use-values themselves that must be reproduced on a like for like basis, and, if there is any change in their value, it results in either a release or tie-up of capital.
“But the formation of a surplus of products is also impossible, for, according to our assumption the labourers consume just as much value as they produce. Moreover, as the capitalists produce no value, it is impossible to see how they are even to live. Yet if such a surplus of production over consumption, such a production and reserve fund, nevertheless exists, and in the hands of the capitalists at that, no other explanation remains possible but that the workers consume for their subsistence merely the value of the commodities and have relinquished the commodities themselves to the capitalist for further use.” (p 249-50)
Sunday, 26 October 2025
Can A Government Run Out Of Money? - Part 6 of 9
With an overproduction of commodities, however, that may not be the case. In Capital II, and III, and in Theories of Surplus Value Part II and III, Marx sets out a whole series of causes of an overproduction of commodities that do not stem from an overproduction of capital. As, Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20, for example, it may be that productivity rises faster in one sphere than another, so that, although both may accumulate the same amount of capital, and increase the value of their output by the same amount, the physical quantity of output in one outstrips that of the other.
In terms of the economy as a whole, or even for each capital, there may be no overproduction of capital, here, i.e. an inability to produce additional surplus value, whilst there may be an overproduction of commodities in one sphere compared to the other, and so, in one, where the quantity of use values expands much more than the increase in the value of its output, it finds it cannot realise the full value of that output, because the market for its output does not grow as fast as its output of use values. In 2000, there was no overproduction of capital, as seen in the fact that the rate of profit was at a high point, having risen throughout the preceding 15 years, and there was a surplus of labour. But, it did not prevent there being a glut of electronic switching gear, just as, in the 1840's, at the start of that long-wave uptrend, there was a glut of railway track and rolling stock.
What consumers consume/demand is not exchange-values, but use-values.
“The same value can be embodied in very different quantities [of commodities]. But the use-value—consumption—depends not on value, but on the quantity. It is quite unintelligible why I should buy six knives because I can get them for the same price that I previously paid for one.” (ibid)
What exists, here, is not a crisis of overproduction of capital, but an overproduction of commodities, a glut in the market, arising from a disproportion. And, contrary to the assertion of Mill, Say and Ricardo that no such generalised overproduction of commodities can arise, Marx, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 17, shows that, of course, in a money economy, let alone a capitalist economy, it can, because all that is required is that consumers, in aggregate, demand the general commodity, money, more than they demand additional commodities that they may buy with it. It is the basis of Keynes' paradox of thrift.
Marx notes,
“At a given moment, the supply of all commodities can be greater than the demand for all commodities, since the demand for the general commodity, money, exchange-value, is greater than the demand for all particular commodities, in other words the motive to turn the commodity into money, to realise its exchange-value, prevails over the motive to transform the commodity again into use-value.”
The error for Ricardo was that, like Mill, he saw money only as currency, as the means of exchange of commodities, as though what was going on was just an exchange of products, as under barter, but with money simply facilitating the process of exchange. But, as Marx describes above, a money economy is quite different to a barter economy, and the production of commodities is quite different to the exchange of merely surplus products. The commodity producer must sell, and obtain what price they can, in order to obtain money and continue production. The owner of money, now, does not simply use it to facilitate exchange, but can hoard it as a store of value, in its own right, and, in doing so, can also, speculate on being able to buy on some more favourable terms, or may use a hoard of money to buy in bulk, with that aim in mind, or else, may hoard it, not to spend, but to lend, and so obtain interest. The money, in these changed social conditions becomes not just money, but money-capital, the start of the circuit for commercial and interest-bearing capital, and under industrial capitalism, the start of each new circuit of productive-capital.
Saturday, 25 October 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. V – Theory of Value - Part 26 of 28
This fact of the recognition of the creation of this surplus physical product, was, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, both the great advance made by the Physiocrats, and the source of their error. It was the basis of their great advance, as against the mercantilists, because it correctly located the basis of surplus value/profit in the realm of production, not distribution and exchange. It was the source of their error, because, focusing only on the physical agricultural/primary production, they equated this surplus product with surplus value, and saw only this production as value creating. Moreover, to explain the surplus production – more easy to see when you can compare the products consumed against the products produced – they wrongly attributed its source as being the land itself, which, thereby, gives the landowner the right to the surplus product.
Adam Smith corrected this error, whilst retaining the insight and advance made by the Physiocrats, as against the mercantilists. The surplus, Smith realised, following the Physiocrats, is created in production and not in exchange. Exchange simply realises the surplus created in production. However, Smith, also, recognised that the essence of value is labour, and not use-value, as the Physiocrats believed. The source of the surplus-value, therefore, was not some mystical power of the land, but that the labour undertaken, and embodied in the value of output is greater than the labour required to produce the commodities, including labour-power, consumed in production. In short, value is labour, and surplus value is surplus labour.
On this basis, Smith was able to go beyond the limitations of the Physiocrats and realise that it was not only agricultural labour that was value creating, but all labour, and not only labour that produces physical commodities that is productive-labour, i.e. productive of surplus value, but all labour that exchanges with capital. As Marx notes in Theories of Surplus Value, unfortunately, Smith, at times, also lapses into physiocracy, and, although he had set out everything required to properly identify the nature of surplus value, he failed to do so, because he failed to make the distinction between labour and labour-power.
As Engels notes, in Capital III, he was rather like Priestley who identified the existence of oxygen, but failed to fully draw the conclusions from his work, leaving it to Lavoisier to do so. As Marx notes, had Smith and Ricardo just recognised from their own analysis the distinction between labour and labour-power, the conundrum they faced would have simply disappeared. It was left to Marx to complete that task.
Friday, 24 October 2025
Can A Government Run Out of Money? - Part 5 of 9
Imagine, Robinson Crusoe on his island. He spends 10 hours a day in labour. Of this 10 hours of labour/new value, he spends 8 hours meeting his immediate consumption needs, required to reproduce his labour-power, so as to labour the following day. The other 2 hours, is the surplus labour/value, and he uses this 2 hours to increase and improve his means of production. He makes nets to better catch fish, traps and weapons to catch animals, and he builds pens to keep domesticated animals, so as to reduce the need to engage in hunting etc. The consequence of this is that his productivity rises. The amount of labour he needs to expend to meet his necessary requirements falls from 8 hours to, say, 4 hours, so that his surplus labour rises to 6 hours, but, as his means of production, which make possible this rise in productivity and total output, increases so too its value as a proportion of that output rises.
If we measure this total value, then, it increases each year, even though the amount of new value created may remain constant at just 10 hours of labour. If Crusoe having come from Scotland, were to measure this value in money terms, he would see that the money equivalent of his output increased accordingly. Robinson, as with a primitive commune, a peasant household, or a communist society of the future, is only concerned to improve his own real wealth, i.e. the quantity and range of use values he has to consume. But, that is not the case with a capitalist society. Capital does not produce, primarily, in order to satisfy society's needs, and increase real wealth, but only to produce more profit. Each capital is, also, driven to produce more profit, because, what it shares with Robinson is that the more profit/surplus labour it has at its disposal the more it can expand and improve its means of production so as to raise its productivity, and, thereby, undercut its competitors.
It is not true, as Ricardo believed, and as others such as Michael Roberts have argued, that capital requires rising rates of profit to increase capital accumulation and vice versa. A lower rate of profit in one sphere, may cause capital to accumulate more slowly in that sphere, or even, be reduced, as it moves to other higher profit spheres, but that does not apply in relation to capital as a whole across the economy. Capital, as a whole, is forced, by its inherent nature as capital, to accumulate, whether the rate of profit is rising or falling. What is true, however, is that, at a certain point, this continued accumulation, results in an overproduction of capital, and a crisis, manifest first in the fact that some of the smaller capitals, with the tightest profit margins, make losses, and go out of business.
“The demand increases constantly, and, in anticipation of this new capital is continually invested in new land, although this varies with the circumstances for different agricultural products. It is the formation of new capitals which in itself brings this about. But so far as the individual capitalist is concerned, he measures the volume of his production by that of his available capital, to the extent that he can still control it himself. His aim is to capture as big a portion as possible of the market. Should there be any over-production, he will not take the blame upon himself, but places it upon his competitors. The individual capitalist may expand his production by appropriating a larger aliquot share of the existing market or by expanding the market itself.”
As Marx points out these crises have the appearance of there being not enough money in the economy, not enough monetary demand for what has been produced. But that is an illusion. What causes these crises whether an overproduction of commodities, or an overproduction of capital (which means, also, an overproduction of commodities, which comprise the physical elements of capital) is the inability of capital to realise profit. In the case of an overproduction of commodities, surplus value may have been produced, but it can't be realised, because production has expanded faster than the market, and so commodities are sold below their value to clear the glut. In the case of an overproduction of capital, surplus value itself cannot be produced, because the demand for labour-power becomes such that wages rise to a level where neither absolute nor relative surplus value is increased by the additional capital advanced.
An overproduction of capital, therefore, can never be resolved by simply increasing aggregate demand. Increased aggregate demand, simply results in the demand for labour-power rising even more, as firms scrabble to employ more workers to meet this increased demand. Relative wages rise even more, squeezing surplus value/profits even more, as happened in the 1970's. The firms that are most productive, most efficient and have the bigger profit margins can expand, but it simply means that capital itself is even more overproduced, and the smaller, less efficient firms, with small or no profit margins, make even bigger losses. The only solution to a crisis of overproduction of capital is a technological revolution like that of the 1970's/80, which replaces labour with technology, and so acts to create a surplus population, reduces wages and the value of labour-power, so as to raise surplus value, and also reduces the unit value of constant capital, so as to raise the rate of profit.
Thursday, 23 October 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. V – Theory of Value - Part 25 of 28
Engels sets out the fallacy of equating labour-power with labour, and so the value of labour-power with the value created by that labour.
“After all, it is clear that what a labourer produces and what he costs are just as much different things as what a machine produces and what it costs. The value created by a labourer in a twelve-hour working-day has absolutely nothing in common with the value of the means of subsistence which he consumes in this working-day and the accompanying period of rest. In these means of subsistence there may be embodied three, four or seven hours of labour-time according to the stage of development reached by the productivity of labour. If we assume that seven hours of labour were necessary for their production, then the theory of value of vulgar economics accepted by Herr Dühring says that the product of twelve hours of labour has the value of the product of seven hours of labour, that twelve hours of labour are equal to seven hours of labour, or that 12=7.” (p 247-8)
To make it even more obvious, Engels reduces it to a physical product – wheat. An agricultural labourer might produce sixty bushels of wheat a year. It doesn't matter whether this labourer is a serf who must provide free labour on the landlord's land, a peasant farmer, or a wage worker. In each case, this sixty bushels of output is in no way a function of, or determined by the amount of wheat the labourer requires – either as wheat to consume, or to exchange for other necessaries – to ensure their own reproduction. That amount may be only 45 bushels in a year. In the various social relations above, the serf simply provides 15 bushels in production, on the landlord's fields, whilst the peasant farmer hands over 15 bushels in rent, whilst the wage labourer, handed over the entire 60 bushels to the capitalist farmer, is handed back 45 as wages.
But, if the vulgar theory, accepted by Duhring is to be believed that labour equals labour-power, and so wages determine the value created, we would similarly have to conclude that 60 = 45!
“The whole development of human society beyond the stage of brute savagery begins from the day when the labour of the family created more products than were necessary for its subsistence from the day when a portion of labour could be devoted to the production no longer of the mere means of subsistence, but of means of production. A surplus of the product of labour over and above the costs of subsistence of the labour, and the formation and expansion, of a social production and reserve fund, out of this surplus, these were and these are the basis of all social, political and intellectual progress.” (p 248)
Wednesday, 22 October 2025
Starmer Privileges Zionist Football Thugs Over British Citizens
Starmer and his Blue Labour government, backed by the Tories, Reform and Liberals, and, of course, the bourgeois media, have gone to extreme levels to prioritise the right of Zionist football thugs from Maccabi Tel Aviv to run riot on the streets of Birmingham, as they have done elsewhere, including in Tel Aviv itself. The degree to which Starmer and the rest have been prepared to lie, and to propose spending millions of pounds in order that a group of racist football hooligans can be free to run amok on British streets seems incredible. What is behind it?
It is not just in Britain that the interests of the Maccabi thugs have been privileged over the interests of local people, or that politicians and the media have lied about the violence and thuggery. When Maccabi thugs ran rampage in the Netherlands, when they played Ajax, politicians and the media, there, also, tried to lie about the violence that ensued, deliberately presenting violence from Maccabi fans as being violence against them, even when the people who produced the video footage they used, called them out on it. Similar things have occurred in Germany, where the authorities have attacked even Jewish protesters who denounced the Zionist genocide.
It cannot be separated from the fact that the Zionist state acts as the proxy of western imperialism. In the words of Chancellor Merz, it “does the dirty work of the West”, or in the words of Joe Biden, “If Israel didn't exist they would have to invent it.” In practice, of course, that is what western imperialism has done. British imperialism via the Balfour declaration promised a state for the Zionists in Palestine. When the Zionists implemented that promise using their own terrorist organisations such as the Irgun and Stern Gang, to go beyond the limits that British imperialism sought to impose on them, British imperialism cut and run, as it has done in so many other places, leaving chaos, violence, death and destruction in its wake.
In the 1950's, British and French imperialism sought to utilise the Zionist state, to further their own old colonialist interests in the region, to secure control of the Suez Canal, which turned out to be the death throw of that colonialism, as it was replaced by US imperialism. From the early 1960's, it was US imperialism that took on that role of “inventing” Israel, as it, in turn, sought to secure a proxy, in the region, to counter the influence of the USSR in the rising Arab states, as they, also, shook off the chains of colonial rule.
On the one hand, therefore, western imperialism is in hock to the Zionist state, which acts as its proxy in the Middle East, just as Ukraine is being used against Russia, or Taiwan is being used against China. That imperialism may not agree with the brazen way that the Zionist regime goes about its task of “doing the dirty work” but it has little option but to continue to support it, including in denying the existence of genocide or war crimes, and acting as its attorney, ridiculously branding any criticism of the actions of the Zionist state, as being “anti-Semitic”, a definition which, itself flows from the imposition of the definition of anti-Semitism set out by the IHRA. But, governments are not states, and, in turn, Starmer's Blue Labour government seems to be particularly in hock to the Zionist state, for which it owes a considerable debt in terms of its role in ensuring the removal of Corbyn as Labour Leader.
The claims that the decision to ban the football thugs of Maccabi from the match against Aston Villa, amounted to anti-Semitism, has been a particularly egregious example of the extent to which Starmer has been prepared to lie in order to privilege the interests of Zionist thugs, and to label any criticism of Zionist thuggery as being “anti-Semitic”. It was claimed by Starmer, and other pro-Zionist apologists, that banning the Maccabi fans was a ban on Jewish football fans! You would think that there are no Jewish fans of Aston Villa, who will be turning up to the match! In fact, as Owen Jones has set out in the video below, the degree to which the pro-Zionist forces are prepared to go is shown by the fact of them putting up someone who claimed to be a Jewish Aston Villa fan, who had received death threats, but who, in fact, is nothing of the sort, but a propagandist for the Zionist regime!
In Parliament Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy showed that either she is totally uninformed about one of the areas of culture she is responsible for, i.e. football, or else that she was, also, deliberately lying, when she claimed that banning all fans of away teams was unheard of, a claim that was also put forward at the weekend by the obnoxious friend of Mandelson, Trevor Phillips. As Ash Sarkar has set out, in the video below, a simple search shows the range of such bans.
Starmer has been let off the hook, because, in fact, Maccabi have, now, declined to take up their allocation of tickets for the match, following the suspension of their match with Hapoel Tel Aviv, due to violence from the fans on both sides. It comes after Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson had also slipped on a Maccabi shirt, and vowed to defend its fans.
Had Maccabi not made that decision, Starmer would have had the problem of defending his decision to spend millions to allow Maccabi thugs to run riot on Birmingham streets, terrorising British Muslims, at a time when even the Zionist authorities in Israel were banning them!
Tuesday, 21 October 2025
Can A Government Run Out of Money? - Part 4 of 9
If a cow is used as money, it is not being used as a cow. If its being used as a cow, its not being used as money. That is most clearly seen if the cow is slaughtered for its meat, for instance. Fortunately, when we come to indirectly measuring the value of all other commodities, and, thereby, also the relative values of all these commodities one to another – their prices – we do not need the presence of physical cows for that purpose. All we need to know is the value of a cow, in the abstract, an imaginary cow. And, the same is true of any other money commodity, such as gold. In reality, all we are using for the purpose of measurement is a quantity of social-labour time, in corporeal form, be it in the shape of a cow, a quantity of salt, silver or gold. So, not only is it the case that not all the physical gold in an economy is money, but it is, likewise, the case that a country might have no physical gold whatsoever, and yet still use gold as its money-commodity.
If gold is internationally recognised as the money-commodity, a country may, itself, have no physical gold, and yet, knowing the value of an ounce of gold, still enables it to indirectly measure the value of all of the other commodities, produced and exchanged in its realm. It can calculate the equivalent amount of gold that would represent the total value of all of the commodities it produces. That is nothing other than measuring the total amount of social labour-time expended on their production, their total social cost of production. If, such a country, establishes an ounce of gold as its standard of prices, and, let us say, calls this standard £1, it can, thereby, put a price on the total value of its production. But, it need have no gold whatsoever to do do that. It can, instead, simply mint coins made from base metal, as a representative of that ounce of gold. Or it could print paper notes, which have no inherent value themselves, as such a representation of that ounce of gold, just as a leather strip could represent a cow. In reality, all they are representing is a given quantity of social-labour-time.
As Marx notes, in Scotland, prior to the 1845 Bank Act, which replicated the 1844 Bank Act in England, virtually no gold coins circulated in Scotland, and they were represented by paper bank notes. The only condition remains that no more of these coins or bank notes are thrown into circulation than the amount of gold they purport to represent. That, of course, is what MMT, like John Law and others before, seeks to deny, as it confuses these money tokens/currency with money itself.
Of course, as I have set out before, it is not entirely that simple, however. Money is an amount of social labour-time, equal to the value of all other commodities produced and to be exchanged within an economy. It is the equivalent form of that value. But, the amount of value produced and exchanged in an economy is not, itself, a fixed quantum. It is constantly changing. If more useful labour is undertaken, more new value is created, and so the amount of money, the equivalent form of this value increases. Marx details, in Capital III, how the Bank of England, varied the amount of currency in circulation, on that basis, not just year to year, but throughout each year.
But, what determines, in a capitalist economy, whether more labour is undertaken, and so new value created? It is that capital accumulates. This is where Richard, as with Keynes, and as with Malthus, whose under-consumptionist theory underlies their arguments, confuses money with capital. The same was seen with the under-consumptionist arguments of Attwood.
In every mode of production, the amount of new value created, each year, tends to grow, because more labour is employed. For one thing, there tends to be a steady rise in population, and with it a rise in the working-population. But, in addition to this growth in the amount of new value created, there is an even greater increase in the amount of total value of output, for the simple reason that, as productivity rises, a greater proportion of the value of output consists of the value of the raw materials and other means of production, produced in previous years. If previously an hour of labour processed 100 kilos of cotton, and now, that same 1 hour of labour process 1,000 kilos of cotton, the amount of new value created remains 1 hour, but the amount of value of cotton transferred to final output rises 10 fold. This is, ultimately, the basis of Marx's Law of The Tendency For The Rate of Profit To Fall.
Monday, 20 October 2025
Anti-Duhring, Part II, Political Economy. V – Theory of Value - Part 24 of 28
As Marx sets out, there are legitimate wages for management, but these are quite different to profit. Marx gives the example of an orchestra. The conductor of the orchestra does not play an instrument, but their role is necessary in ensuring that all those that do play instruments do so in a harmonious manner. The role of the “functioning capitalist” is precisely of this nature. It is to bring together, in an efficient manner, all of the means of production, and coordinate the production process. As Marx details in Capital III, in large-scale, socialised capital, it represents the separation and distinction between capital as function and capital as property.
The functioning capitalist does not own the capital. Either they are employed, as a professional manager, by a private capitalist, who does own the capital, or, in the case of socialised capital, be it a cooperative or joint stock company, the capital is owned by the company itself, as a legal entity, i.e. it is collectively owned by the associated producers within the company at the time, and the functioning capitalist is just another member of the company, performing the specific role of coordination and supervision, like the orchestra conductor. In fact, as this socialised capital assumes mammoth proportions it is necessary to have not just one or a few such individuals in a company, but a growing army of such managers administrators and technicians.
They are, as Marx and Engels describe, increasingly drawn from the ranks of the working-class, which itself requires an expansion of free public education. The result is that these functioning capitalists not only are paid just a wage for their labour-power, but this wage is frequently lower than that of a skilled manual worker. This role of the functioning capitalist, as Marx notes, in relation to the large-scale, socialised capital, has to be distinguished from that of the directors, placed above them by the shareholders, whose role is not any such function, but is to directly represent the interests of shareholders as creditors of the company, rather then the interests of the company itself. These directors are not paid a wage for the supply of their labour-power, but, like with the shareholders they represent, simply leach from the company's profit. The shareholders leach in the form of interest/dividends, and their directors, as well as often being, also, shareholders, assign to themselves a portion of profit whilst labelling it salary.
Sunday, 19 October 2025
Can A Government Run Out of Money? - Part 3 of 9
Money is a representation of a given amount of value/social labour-time. It arises as a commodity separated from all other commodities as a general measure of social labour-time, by which the value of all other commodities can, thereby, be measured indirectly. It becomes the general commodity, or, as Marx puts it, it becomes exchange-value incarnate. What does that mean? If I produce a commodity such as linen above, it has a value – 10 hours of labour – but, in commodity producing economies, I do not produce linen for the purpose of consuming the linen myself. As linen, it has no use-value for me. I produce linen, because I can exchange this linen for some other commodity/ies that I do want to consume, for example wine.
In other words, I do not produce linen for its use-value to me, of which it has none, as simply linen, but for its exchange-value, its ability, as a quantity of social-labour-time/value, to be exchanged for some other commodity – wine – which does have use-value/utility to me. As set out above, the basis of this exchange, the ratio in which my linen and your wine exchange is itself determined by the value of each, the amount of labour-time they represent. (I have set out elsewhere, why, even if you do not accept the labour theory of value, this still applies). When Marx says that money represents exchange-value incarnate, what he means is this. The money itself has no use-value, other than it represents pure exchange value. The purpose of owning it, is only to be able to exchange it for some other commodity, and what makes money different from all other commodities is that it can be exchanged for any other commodity.
If I own a metre of linen, I may be able to exchange it for your wine, because you want my linen, but I may not be able to exchange it for your neighbour's wine, because they do not want linen. With money, it can always be exchanged for any other commodity, because its use-value, as money, is precisely that it alone can be exchanged for any other commodity and does so, because it is the indirect measure of value, the general commodity. But, here, is the thing. That is true of money, as money, but it is not true of the money-commodity itself, as a commodity.
In other words, if gold is the money-commodity - but we could as easily choose silver, cattle, salt etc. - as a commodity, it does have use-value, and must have to become the money-commodity in the first place. Gold has use-value when used as gold in jewellery, electronic circuits and so on. Silver has use-value, as a commodity, when used in jewellery, and so on, and cattle obviously have use-value, for food etc. It is the fact that all of these things – which have all, at times, been used as the money commodity – do have use-value, and so have value as commodities, means they could become the money commodity. If no one had ever wanted cattle, for example, i.e. they had no use-value, they would, also, have no value, no matter how much labour-time was expended in their production.
You cannot indirectly measure the value of any other commodity by using the measuring rod of a commodity, which, itself, has zero value, any more than you can measure the length of a table using a measuring stick that has no length. It would just be a useless waste of social-labour-time. So, if cattle, thereby, had no value, as commodities, they could never have become the means of indirectly measuring the value of other commodities. They could not have become the money commodity, could not have existed as money. The same is true today with Bitcoin. It has no use-value as a commodity, and so no value, no matter how many millions of labour hours are spent “mining” them. They have a speculative monopoly price, but that is different. That price has no material basis other than monopoly and speculative fervour. The price can be as easily zero as $100,000, which is why its price swings so wildly, and will, always, in the end, tend towards zero, when the speculative bubbles burst, precisely because it has no value.
Whatever the commodity is that acts as the money commodity, it must first have use-value, and, thereby, value as a commodity, but, once adopted as the money-commodity, when it acts as money, rather than as commodity, its only use-value is as money, and not as commodity. In other words, its a case of “you can't have cake and eat it”. This also, means that, clearly, not all the gold in an economy is itself money. Some of it is money, but, some of it is just the commodity gold, used for jewellery etc. It shows, also, why there is nothing intrinsic or special about gold that makes it money. Money, like capital is a social relation. As Marx points out capital, is money raised to a higher power, which, also, illustrates that money, itself, is not capital (though it is always potentially capital), and that, again, is something that Richard does not understand, which I will discuss later.
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