Elsewhere, I have set out the way in which a rise in productivity results in a release of capital. In other words, the opposite condition applies to that set out above. Higher productivity results in a fall in unit values, i.e. more use-values are produced by a given amount of labour, so that each unit contains less labour/value. That lower unit value, means that each unit of output has a lower value than the unit value/historic cost of the same use-values used in production, as inputs. Looked at in the same context as that set out above, as a snapshot, this seems to result in a reduction in the mass of profit, and fall inthe rate of profit, just as, in the case of a crop failure, the reverse seems to be true. But, again, that is an illusion caused by a focus on money values/prices.
A rise in productivity, resulting in lower unit values, gives the appearance, if only a single year is considered, of reducing profit, but represents only a capital loss – the most obvious example of that is Marx's analysis of moral depreciation. But, on the basis of continuing production, this rise in productivity, and fall in unit values, means that a smaller portion of total output is required to replace the consumed constant and variable capital. It produces a release of capital. Although this release of capital manifests as an increase in profit, it is again, an illusion. But, the fact that it also reducesthe value of labour-power means that it does raise the rate of surplus value, and so does raise the mass of profit. Moreover, any given mass of profit, now, represents a higher rate of profit, because the value of c and v are reduced, so that s/(c +v) rises. This is what happened in the 1980's and 90's.
The Physiocrats made the same mistake of failing to distinguish between labour and labour-power that continues in the work of Smith, and is found in the work of Proudhon. It manifests differently, because the Physiocrats were concerned with use-values, whereas Smith was concerned with values – though, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Smith, also, slips back into Physiocracy in places. The Physiocrats argued, as set out above, that 1,000 tons of corn is used as seed (constant capital), 1,000 tons as wages (variable-capital), but 3,000 tons is the output, with the 1,000 tons surplus mystically arising from the land, providing the basis for he owner of the land to obtain rent.
But, as set out earlier, this assumes that the 1,000 tons of corn paid as wages, which is equal to a value of 1,000 hours of labour, or £10,000, is the same as the new value created by that labour. It isn't. The value of labour-power, the use-value of being able to perform labour, is equal to the value of the 1,000 tons of corn required to reproduce that labour-power, i.e. is equal to 1,000 hours of labour. The workers, however, perform not this 1,000 hours required to reproduce their labour-power, but 2,000 hours, 1,000 hours of surplus labour, manifest in the surplus product of 1,000 tons of corn.
Suppose we go back to an initial condition where, as noted earlier, Nature provides its gifts freely. In other words, we have nature, by its own evolutionary processes creating corn. Early humans are able to consume this corn, just as cows consume grass in a field, as a use-value, gratis. It has no value, no labour has been expended on its production. Value is just the label, the scientific term we give to this labour required to take the free gifts of Nature, and to enhance them, by transforming them in some way. It may be, for example, taking the seeds from plants, and, instead of relying on Nature to cast them, haphazardly, we plant them in dedicated areas, and tend them so as to raise the output.
In this case, we start with seed corn that has no value, no labour has been spent on it. To use the terms applicable to capitalist production c = 0. But, the first farmers must collect the seed, they must create seed drills into which they plant the seeds, and they must cultivate the seed, watering it and so on. If they collect a ton of seed, which, left to Nature, would have produced 2 tons of corn, by cultivating it, they may obtain 10 tons of corn. That represents an improvement in their real wealth of 500%.
The greater the amount of surplus labour/value, the greater the potential to a) expand population, and b) to expand the scale of production itself. If we consider, as Marx does, that profit is a historically limited form of this surplus value, then, profit cannot be greater than this surplus-value. It can be less, because, as Marx sets out in Capital III, the surplus value, having been produced, must be realised by the sale of commodities, and that is not guaranteed, but, even if they are sold, at their value, there are lots of costs involved in their circulation, and these costs all represent a deduction from the produced surplus value/profit.
But, then, we can see why this posed a problem for Ramsay, because, if profit equals surplus value, then, a rise in the price of corn, relative to the historic price paid for the seed – corn – appears to produce profit higher than the produced surplus-value. The surplus-value, in the example, was equal to £10,000 (10,000 tons). But, now, if the price of corn rises to £12 per ton, the 3,000 tons sells for £36,000, whilst its cost of production was still only equal to £20,000, a surplus-value of £10,000 now seems to be at odds with a “profit” of £16,000. Ramsay concluded that this additional £6,000 of profit was, thereby, attributable to the constant capital itself.
But, what is the reality? Firstly, as set out earlier, this additional £6,000 of profit is an illusion, and is really just a one-off capital gain. To continue production on the same scale, the farmer, or someone who buys the farm from them, must, now, use £12,000 of the proceeds of the sale of corn, just to replace the seed, whereas, before, it only cost £10,000. Secondly, in this example, wages are equated with corn, as though this is all the workers consume. So, to replace the variable-capital (1,000 tons of corn) the farmer must hand over the same 1,000 tons, but which, also, now, represents a value of £12,000, and not £10,000, as before. Finally, the farmer appropriates the remaining £12,000, but this only enables them to consume the same 1,000 tons of corn as before.
In effect, as I will show, its just money-illusion, with a 20% inflation. If they previously devoted half of their profit to capital accumulation (£2,500 to seed, £2,500 to labour-power), to do so, now, costs them £3,000 for seed and £3,000 for labour-power/wages. But, even this is not the full story.
In this scenario, there are only two commodities, corn and labour-power. If the value/price of corn has risen by 20%, this can only be because productivity has fallen, for example due to a poor harvest, (or else the value of money/or the standard of prices has fallen). In other words, output can no longer be 3,000 tons of corn. In place of money prices, it is best seen by using values, i.e. labour hours.
Assume that, initially, 1,000 tons of corn is equal to 1,000 hours of labour. In terms of values, then, we had 1,000 c + 1,000 v + 1,000 s. But, as a result of this poor harvest, and fall in productivity, the 1,000 hours of labour contained in the seed, plus the 2,000 hours of new labour performed to turn it into corn, no longer produces 3,000 tons of corn, but something less. For the unit value of corn to rise from £10 per ton to £12 per ton, the 3,000 hours of labour, represented by total output, must result in output of only 2500 tons, equal to £30,000. The unit value rises from 1 hour per ton to 1.2 hours per ton.
So, as Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, although the unit price has risen by 20%, output falls by 16% (1/6). But, Marx notes, the farmer must still replace the consumed 1,000 tons of seed, and the 1,000 tones of corn that forms the variable capital, with these same physical quantities. Capital, as Marx notes, is a social relation, and that social relation only expands as a result of more labour being exploited. Consequently, the surplus product is reduced from 1,000 tons to just 500 tons. Previously, the surplus product represented a third of total output, and a half of the cost of production. Now, it represents only a fifth of total output, and a quarter of the cost of production.
Put another way, the 1,000 tons of surplus product could increase the size of the capital by 50%, whereas, now, it can expand by only 25%. What appeared, superficially, as an increase in the amount of profit, and rise in the rate of profit, measured against the historic cost of production, turns out to be an illusion, and the opposite. The additional money “profit” was simply a capital gain resulting from the rise in the unit value/price of corn. That same rise in unit value/price, resulting from a fall in productivity, actually causes a greater proportion of total output to be needed to reproduce the consumed constant and variable-capital. So, in reality, the mass of profit falls, because the rate of surplus-value falls. Previously, £10,000 advanced as wages produced £20,000 of new value, and so, £10,000 of surplus-value. But, now, the same 1,000 tons of corn (wages) has a value of £12,000. Previously, it represented 1,000 hours of labour, and now represents 1200 hours.
The labour still produces 2000 hours of new value, equal to £20,000, but, now, 1200 hours constitute necessary labour, and only 800 hours surplus labour. The rate of surplus value falls from 100% to 66.6%, and the mass of surplus value from £10,000 to £8,000. But, as Marx sets out, even if we disregard this fall in the rate of surplus value, and consequent reduction in the mass of surplus value, the rate of profit would still fall. Previously, surplus value represented 100% of the value of constant capital (seed). But, even assuming it remained at 1000 hours (£10,000) the seed, now, has a value of £12,000, so that the profit represents only 5/6 of its value.
The attempts of the establishment an its media to foster the illusion that Labour was still in with a chance of winning the Gorton & Denton by-election inevitably failed. It was always a two-horse race between Greens and Reform, and increasingly, as I have set out before, that will be the case in coming elections, too. In Scotland and Wales, that will take the form of a two-horse race between SNP and Reform, and Plaid and Reform, respectively. The only question in this by-election was whether Greens or Reform would win, and by how much? In turn, as Reform has, now, peaked that turned on just by how much Labour's vote collapsed.
In the end, it wasn't even close. The Green's secured 40% of the vote, the kind of figure that, in a two-party system, is required to win elections. They won by 4,000 votes, thereby, also cutting off any rational basis for the inevitable attempts to claim that they only won, because of some ballot rigging and shenanigans, or that it was all due to the Greens mobilising some sectarian Muslim vote. Reform, of course, has still tried to do that, digging up some “independent” group that no one had heard of called “Democracy Volunteers”, who, after the vote had ended, claimed they had witnessed instances of “family voting”.
As the professional election officials in Manchester noted, if the “Democracy Volunteers” had witnessed such activity, which is a criminal offence, why did they not draw it to the attention of the responsible officials as it was occurring, including, thereby, the police? Anyone who has worked on polling duty, or who has been a candidate in an election, knows that its highly unlikely, because the officials have to hand ballot papers individually to voters, and are able from their seats to monitor the voting booths, to be able to see if anyone else other than the voter enters them. There will, no doubt, be some further investigation of the claims, but it also invites an investigation into just who the “volunteers” were, who made these belated claims.
The size of the Greens win, however, means that not even Reform have been able to claim that, were they valid, they would change the result. That Reform has still pressed them simply shows them up as bad losers, and more concerned to simply whip up Islamophobic hysteria. They have not been alone, however. Labour, also, as it must have known it was going to lose, looked for excuses and scapegoats. They attacked the Greens for putting out literature in Urdu! In the past, not only has Labour put out its literature in the language of the communities whose votes it was seeking, but so do local councils, and other organisations. If you are serious about wanting to be inclusive, then, why would you not seek to communicate with those communities in their own language, in order to include and integrate them? But, of course, the media, also, fell in with the meme of suggesting that there was something unusual and sinister in such actions.
Labour also showed that its desperation has reached new levels, leading to its politics and methods sinking even further into the sewers. As it saw its strategy and its vote collapse to the Greens, it put out a leaflet from a made up organisation, to claim that the latest polls suggested that only a vote for Labour could beat Reform. Together with sending a van around the streets with a picture of Polanski and Spencer, claiming that they wanted to turn over families daughters to prostitution, they also, put out leaflets claiming that they wanted to lead them into drug addiction by legalising all drugs. That's the same argument used by the old reactionaries to claim that arguing for legalising abortion amounts to encouraging it, or encouraging girls to have sex, and, before that, it was used to argue against sex education, and contraception.
Labour also attacked the Greens for putting out leaflets of Starmer with Modi and Netanyahu. But, if Starmer and his government are proud of their relationships with these vile reactionary nationalist regimes, why would they object to anyone publicising them. Those behind Blue Labour, of course, seemed to have no problem with using similar images of Jeremy Corbyn, standing alongside representatives of Hamas, Hezbollah and so on. Labour, also, seems to have forgotten that it put out election leaflets showing Boris Johnson standing alongside Modi, with an explicit message attached to it.
Labour has sunk to new depths, and to try to cling on, it simply lies each time it opens its mouth.
As I wrote recently, all this shows is that class remains the basis of political interests and ideas. The petty-bourgeoisie, formerly, provided the core support for the Conservatives, but the Conservative Party, in government, never represented their interests, other than in the sense that the petty-bourgeois, always looked up towards the bourgeoisie, and hoped to join them in due course. The organised working-class always formed the core support for Labour, but it never represented their interests in government, other than in mollifying the worst aspects of their exploitation and oppression, and a continual promise of “jam tomorrow”, based on the idea that the interests of workers was, also, for a successful expansion of capital.
That relationship has not changed, it has simply changed the labels on the parties. The petty-bourgeoisie, hugely increased in numbers, but also driven, since the 1980's, into increased levels of poverty and precarity, lost hope in its interests being pursued by the Conservatives, and so it split away to be transformed into Reform. Blue Labour sought to chase after a mirage. It confused poverty with class seeing the least affluent, most precarious sections of society, the petty-bourgeois, with working-class, which they never were or will be, any more than, in the past, the peasantry were part of the working-class. Their ideas, their interests are and always will be, self-centred, individualistic, and determined by their relation to the means of production, the fact that they own them, but that, given their dwarfish nature, they are always led to the most crude means of being competitive. They are, inimical to the interests of the working-class.
Yet, Blue Labour made the quest for the votes of these reactionary, petty-bourgeois, and their associated layers within the ranks of the lumpen, and backward sections of unorganised workers, the centre of its strategy, if it even merits such a designation. The idea that the vote for Brexit could be equated, in the so called “Red Wall” seats, with the vote of working-class, Labour voters, was always a fallacy. In those seats, the working-class, Labour voters, much as elsewhere, voted overwhelmingly to Remain – around 60-70%. Those areas voted Leave, not because of support from a majority of working-class, Labour voters, but because of a solid vote from that petty-bourgeoisie, including many who usually do not bother to even vote.
By chasing an illusion, and, so, when Farage says “jump”, Starmer has simply asked “how high?”, Labour failed, inevitably, to win the votes of that reactionary petty-bourgeois mass that has never been the base of the Labour vote, and which simply transferred from Tory to Reform, but, also, turned away in their droves, the actual working-class base of Labour support. By even abandoning the mild social-democratic agenda of Labour of the previous 80 years, Starmer's Labour cut off any chance of securing that actual working-class base, seen in the fact that, whilst Corbyn brought much of that support back, in 2017, Blue Labour has dissipated it all.
The only thing that saved Starmer in 2024 was the fact that the rebranding of Toryism into Reform was not complete, so that the petty-bourgeois, Tory/Reform vote was split, allowing Labour to win, with an historically low number of votes, and low share of the votes. That process is now playing out with Labour too. Gorton and Denton shows that the old inertia, together with the efforts of the media to portray Labour as still having hope of winning, enabled it to retain support. But, that illusion has been shattered. It went from winning the seat with more than 50% of the vote (in the past it had 60% of the vote) in 2024, to third place, and its vote share being halved. The fate of the Tories simply shows it the future. The Tories lost their deposit.
In election after election, now, the argument that only Labour can defeat Reform cannot credibly be made. On the contrary, the argument, now, becomes, only the Greens (also read, SNP, Plaid) can defeat Reform, and a vote for Labour is a wasted vote. Reform, much as with Trump in the US, has peaked, as the support for such petty-bourgeois parties always does. But, that does not benefit Labour which has simply attempted to present itself as its pale shadow. It means that, in the period ahead, in elections at least, it will be the Greens that play the role that, in the past, was played by Labour.
So, we have £10,000 (1,000 tons) of seed (c) and £10,000 (1,000 tons) of corn as wages. But, the output is £30,000 (3,000 tons) of corn – the advantage for illustration, here, is that the corn and the seed are the same thing – giving a surplus-value of £10,000, represented by 1,000 tons of corn/seed. As described above, in relation to the surplus product of 1,000 tons, it is partly attributable to Nature, and partly to labour. Think of Nature existing prior to the existence of Man, and so of labour. The universe evolved in accordance with a set of natural laws. It is not that additional matter and energy was created, but that existing matter and energy was transformed by these processes.
If we take the Earth, then, these same processes result in the development of organic matter, and from which organic life arises. Take, in this early Earth, a field containing grass. The grass produces grass seed, and the seed is spread across the land, so that, even millennia before the existence of Man or labour, what began, as say, 1 ton of grass seed, quickly becomes 10 tons of grass seed. It arises, not magically out of thin air, as the Physiocrats portrayed it, but as a result of the chemical transformation of matter and energy in one form to another. The surplus product – the multiplication of 1 ton of seed into 10 tons – is not really a surplus product at all, but a localised transformation of chaos and disorder into order. A process of self-organisation.
Long before settled agriculture, this natural transformation of chaos and disorder into order and structure created all of those free gifts of Nature. Because they were the free gifts of Nature, and often provide the greatest use-value, they simultaneously, had novalue. The air we breathe has the greatest use-value, because, without it, we could not exist. But, it has no value. Nature provides it gratis. The same with water.
What Labour does is to facilitate the localised transformation of disorder into order. What appears as a surplus product is really just an increase in the quantity of use-values, the things that we determine as useful, but is really just, at the same time, a consumption of other use-values, which are less useful to us in their disordered, natural state.
As Marx sets out, in Capital I, the free gifts of Nature have no value other than use-value. Value is only created by labour, or, more correctly, value is labour. Similarly, surplus-value is, then, surplus labour. Surplus labour itself can be seen as part of this process of turning disorder into order. If there was no surplus labour performed, for one thing, populations could not grow, and, given that it is the existence of humans (and possibly other intelligent life-forms, elsewhere) that is the most effective means of transforming disorganised matter and energy into organised structures, it is that expansion of population that represents the most effective means of such transformation, even though humans have existed for only a blink of an eye, compared to the age of the Universe.
I wrote about this some time ago, in response to one of Brian Cox's TV programs, and I was interested to see, later, that he has changed his own opinion on the matter, wondering what the existence of intelligent life existing for billions of years could achieve in manipulating matter and energy on a cosmic scale.
Secondly, it is only the existence of surplus labour that enables a part of current production to be set aside so as to expand production in the next and subsequent years. That may be just additional seed that can be planted, or it may be the production of tools and so on that enable production itself to be more efficient so that a greater quantity of disorganised matter and energy can be transformed into new organised structures.
In this can be seen Marx's analysis and explanation of the tie-up and release of capital, in response to the error of Ramsay, and the illusion created of an increase or fall in profit, which was nothing but, on the one hand, a capital gain/loss, or on the other, a release/tie-up of capital. Ramsay, and the TSSI makes the same error, saw a rise in corn prices, during the year, which results in a capital gain for the given farmer, as being a “profit”, arising simply from the constant capital, i.e. the the seed corn, whose price rose relative to its “historic cost”. The farmer bought seed corn at the “historic cost” of of £10 a ton, and sells it at £12 a ton, a “profit” of £2 a ton that mysteriously appears from nowhere.
But, as Marx points out, the illusion of this “profit” from nowhere depends on us viewing matters in the purely isolated terms that Ramsay and the TSSI do. If, like Ramsay and the TSSI, we take the individual farmer and just this one year, then, yes, if they stopped production at the end of the year, they would have, say, 1,000 tons of corn, with a value of £12,000, for which they had only paid £10,000, leaving them with a £2,000 “profit”. But, Marx points out that this static picture, a snapshot in time, is not the end of the matter, in reality.
If the farmer did not discontinue production, and mostly farmers do not cease production after one year, then, rather than having to advance £10,000 for seed corn, they have to advance £12,000. The apparent £2,000 of profit has immediately disappeared, and is not available to them either to increase their personal consumption or to accumulate capital. Indeed, in terms of the rate of profit, and so the ability to accumulate capital, it would have been diminished.
Suppose the farmer starts with the seed corn amounting to 1,000 tons, with an historic price of of £10 per ton, i.e. £10,000. The above illustration simply assumed that, at the end of the year, this same 1,000 tons has a monetary value of £12,000, producing a “profit” of £2,000. This is the same logic that fuels speculative asset price bubbles, in which a simple rise in asset prices – shares, bonds, houses – is seen as magically producing a “profit” that can be taken by the owner of the asset. Wealth from thin air. It has been the basis of the economic model of conservative social-democracy (neoliberalism) from the 1980's until the global financial crash of 2008, and which it is still desperately trying to sustain. The importance of Marx's analysis, and of the labour theory of value is to show why this is a dangerous delusion. It is a delusion at the heart of the TSSI, and also within MMT, though in different forms.
The situation facing the farmer was not only that they laid out £10,000 for seed corn (1,000 tons) but, also, that they laid out, let us say, £10,000 for wages. Here we come back to the error of the Physiocrats. The Physiocrats saw 1,000 tons of seed corn, and 1,000 tons of corn as wages/labour, resulting in an output of 3,000 tons of corn, a surplus of 1,000 tons. They attributed the surplus to the land, but, as Smith and the Classical Economists showed, this surplus product was not, in fact, some mysterious product of the land but of labour.
In fact, although Smith et al set this out, they did not fully draw out the reality of what they had discovered. In Capital I, Marx explains it, by reference to a group of primitive people who were able to meet their requirements by labouring for only a small number of hours per week. They could reproduce their labour-power by just this expenditure of labour.
“But consider, for example, an inhabitant of the eastern islands of the Asiatic Archipelago, where sago grows wild in the forests.
'When the inhabitants have convinced themselves, by boring a hole in the tree, that the pith is ripe, the trunk is cut down and divided into several pieces, the pith is extracted, mixed with water and filtered: it is then quite fit for use as sago. One tree commonly yields 300 lbs., and occasionally 500 to 600 lbs. There, then, people go into the forests, and cut bread for themselves, just as with us they cut fire-wood.'” [F. Schouw: “Die Erde, die Pflanze und der Mensch,” 2. Ed. Leipz. 1854, p. 148. ]
But, that did not limit the amount of labour they could undertake, the amount of new value they could, thereby, create. This new value, also, thereby, takes the form of a surplus product, in excess of what is required to reproduce their labour-power. It is not the land or some magical property of it that creates the surplus product, but the surplus labour undertaken. An error of the TSSI is, also, that they confuse this new value produced by labour, which is always positive, with surplus value, which is usually positive, but is so only because the new value created is greater than the value of labour-power.
Similarly, as Marx points out, if the agricultural labourer/farmer only undertook sufficient labour as to produce the 2,000 tons of corn required to reproduce the seed corn consumed, and their own labour-power, their would be no surplus product/value. There would be no possibility of rent, profit, interest or taxes, either in the form of use-values or their money equivalent. The surplus product of 1,000 tons is not the consequence of some mystical property of the land, but of the fact that surplus labour has been undertaken. In order to ensure that this surplus labour is undertaken, the labourer must be denied access to the means of production, unless they do so, by the owner of those means of production. The amount of labour performed in excess of the necessary labour, surplus labour, is the real basis of the surplus-value.
It is not the only basis of the surplus product. As Marx describes in Capital and elsewhere, the basis of the surplus product is both Labour and Nature. Nature provides use-values as free gifts, labour utilises them and transforms them into products that have value. The more bountiful Nature is, in the provision of these free gifts, the more productive is labour, i.e. the more products/use-values it is able to create in a given amount of time. In other words, the lower the unit value of each product. Again, here, we see the constant presence and influence of The Law of Value, as a Natural Law.
The establishment seem to be apoplectic at the thought that the Greens look set to win the by-election in Gorton and Denton, tomorrow. On the one hand, we have the far-right wing of the establishment such as The Daily Mail, which has followed Trump down the rabbit hole of absurdity, and is now claiming ridiculously, on its front page that the Greens are going to offer illegal migrants a free house. The claims of the Mail, are an hysterical extension of its long-standing racist lies about preferential treatment for immigrants, going back decades, as it now fears that, not only are the Greens going to beat Labour,, but are set to, also, beat Reform
On the other hand, we have the centrist elements of the establishment, similarly concerned that the Greens might beat Labour from its Left, and might, also beat Reform. The centrists have no desire for a Reform victory, but they certainly would prefer it over a win for the Greens. For the last 6 years, Starmer has tagged along behind first the Tories, and, then, their reincarnation as Reform, in a continual ratchet to the reactionary, nationalist Right. The narrative was created that Reform could only be defeated by Labour, despite the fact that voters were presented with just different shades of reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalism and the prospect of increasing attacks on workers' living standards and rights, following Brexit, and attempts to distract them by the usual appeals to rally around the flag on the basis of ridiculous claims about imminent invasion.
A win for the Greens shatters that narrative, and what scares the establishment is that its quite clear that with the Conservatives now destroyed, Labour is headed to the same fate. The race in Gorton and Denton, formerly a rock solid Labour seat, is solely between Reform and The Greens. The question is only which of these two parties come out on top, and how badly Labour does, further down the ballot. Labour further destroyed its chances by blocking Burnhan from standing, in the interests, purely of Starmer's Blue Labour faction, which has wrecked the party, and, is now, reaping the consequences, as it loses its grip. The same factionalism and cronyism has led to the current scandals around Epstein and Mandelson, which look set to gradually draw in all of those that were a part of that Mandelson cabal.
What the establishment and pundits have failed to recognise is that class based politics, continues to dominate, and to determine voting. The reactionary petty-bourgeoisie, which, as a class was the bedrock of the Tories/Conservatives has simply shifted to Reform, which is nothing more than a rebranding of the Tories. The aspiring, professional middle-class fraction of Conservative support, which was the support base of the social-democratic wing of the party, typified by the likes of Heath, Heseltine and Clarke (the Wets) and, consequently, of the interests of large-scale capital, and the EU, has moved to its rational home in the Liberals. As Blue Labour has abandoned even that kind of conservative, social-democracy, it is unable to attract either those sections of the middle-class, in the way Blair did, or to attract the working-class, on the back of a pursuit of progressive social-democracy, as it did under Attlee, Wilson/Callaghan, or Corbyn. That working-class/middle-class vote has now gone to the Greens.
According to numerous reports, local Labour activists in Gorton and Denton have already acknowledge that reality, and given up. Why on Earth, would any rational Labour activist waste their time trudging the streets to advocate a vote for someone and something that the vast majority of them, also, do not support. Its not like in the past, when activists might do that to support a given candidate, using the contact with voters to, set out their own disagreements with the leadership, and encourage the to join the party, and assist in a struggle to transform it, as for example, we did with the Socialist Campaign for A Labour Victory, in 1979. Today, Starmer's Bonapartist Blue Labour regime has prevented any such struggle within the party, as seen with the mass expulsions, the imposition from above of candidates, and the blocking of Burnham. No amount of high profile flying visits to the seat will change that reality, as they try to shore up an illusion.
The progressive working-class vote in the constituency has already moved to the Greens, and all those former Labour voters, can, now, see that to beat Reform the Greens offer the only hope. They look set to fulfil that hope, which is why the establishment in both its far-right and centrist factions have united to try to stop the Greens. Labour, has tried to attack the Greens from the opposite direction, with its own sets of lies. Rather than joining in with the racist lies of the Daily Mail, about Greens giving free houses to illegal migrants and so on, Labour instead have focussed on The Greens opposition to the genocide being committed by the Zionist regime against Palestinians. Its not that Blue Labour has not mimicked the racist policies of Reform, the Tories and the Mail, but that they know that, in this seat, echoing those particular lies would be likely to lose it even more votes.
And, despite the fact that Polansky is himself Jewish, Blue Labour think that with their ridiculous attacks on his opposition to the genocide, a genocide that Starmer and Blue Labour has denied exists, and which they have armed and supported, they will turn some of those voters against the Greens in that constituency. No doubt they have blindly looked back to the former Labour MP for Manchester, Gerald Kaufman, but, had they looked more closely, they would have seen that Kaufman was, also, a critic of the kind of politics that the Zionist regime has been undertaking.
Blue Labour has destroyed the Labour Party, much as the same petty-bourgeois nationalists have destroyed the Conservative Party. In the latter case they have emerged like the monster on Alien, out of the stomach of the Conservatives, now, as Reform, that reality shown by the number of Tory MP's like Jenrick, Jenkyns and so on that now, litter its ranks. At some point, the same is likely to be true with Blue Labour, as, having destroyed Labour, those elements also, join Reform. A look at the journey travelled by many of those associated with the likes of Glassman, in the ranks of Spiked Online, shows how easily that is done.
So, the banner of social-democracy has now fallen, by default, into the hands of the Greens, or, in Scotland and Wales, the SNP and Plaid. To beat Reform, the working-class, and progressive, professional middle-class, now, rationally, have only those parties as a means of doing, so in elections. In places, the Liberals may, also, offer a similar alternative. The tragedy, once again, is that socialists have not risen to the task of filling that void. The labour vote in Gorton has collapsed, and the beneficiaries are the Greens. To defeat Reform, it will need to collapse completely. Given the reactionary, anti-working-class nature of Blue Labour, that should not be hard to envisage, and the question now is, will Labour even be able to muster enough votes to beat the Liberals into third place.
Britain and other states in the NATO imperialist alliance have been ramping up the war rhetoric in recent months, as they prepare to move from the phase of phoney war to hot war, as the drive to World War III accelerates. They claim that its necessary to massively increase military spending, and, thereby, divert spending away from real capital investment, to improve living standards, because of some supposed imminent military threat to western Europe from Russia. This is the same Russia, of course, that has been bogged down, just in Eastern Ukraine for the last four years. There is no indication that Russia poses any immediate, or, for that matter, longer term military threat to western Europe. It may pose threats in other ways, such as via cyber attacks, and interference in political processes, but that is a different matter, and its hard to see how spending more on weapons deals with that. What would you do, blow up your own computer systems?
The real military threats to western Europe, in fact, have not come from Russia - or China - but from the US. Its the US that has threatened to invade Greenland - or was it Iceland as Trump doesn't seem to know the difference. Its the US that has been bombing one country after another, as well as one of its envoys Mike Huckabee literally threatening biblical hellfire, to justify a Zionist takeover of land "from the river to the sea", as being justified by God in the Bible. Similarly, Boris Johnson, fresh from having wrecked the British economy with help from his mate Farage, via Brexit, has now blown the gaff on what is going on by blurting out that he wants British troops, now, on the ground, openly in Ukraine, i.e. not Russia knocking at the door of Britain and Western Europe, but vice versa.
Nothing much changes. In the last couple of hundred years, it has never been Russia, let alone China that has been threatening to invade Britain, France or the rest of western Europe. It has always been the other way around. It was Britain and France attacking Russia during the Crimean War, thousands of miles from both Britain and France. It was France, during the Napoleonic Wars that invaded Russia, not vice versa. It was Germany that invaded Russia during World War I, and, although Russia fought on the side of the Allies in both world wars, after World War I, it was Britain, France, the US, and a succession of other imperialist powers that invaded Russia in an attempt to overthrow the workers' revolution.
So, when, the USSR fell, and NATO, despite its assurances given to Gorbachev, to get his agreement to German unification, rapidly expanded Eastwards, marching its battalions ever closer to Moscow, the Russian people saw history repeating once again. Not surprisingly, their reactionary leaders took advantage of that, to enhance their own positions. Yeltsin the puppet of US imperialism, who presided over the looting of state assets, and immiseration of the population, was replaced by Putin. So, similarly, when NATO sought to expand further East, first in Georgia, where even western observers noted that Saakashvili engaged in an attempted ethnic cleansing of Russians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and, later in Georgia, its no wonder that the Russian leaders saw the opportunity to mobilise the population behind them.
In Georgia, the Russian troops quickly dispatched the invading Georgian forces, and raced towards the Georgian capital Tbilisi. Yet, contrary to the narrative being created, today, in respect of Ukraine, having rolled their tanks into Tbilisi, the Russian did not overthrow the government, or occupy Georgia. Having neutered the Georgian military threat, they withdrew, securing the ethnic Russian populations in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It was no doubt, not a sign of the peaceful, moral nature of Putin's regime, but simply a recognition of the fact that there was nothing to be gained by Russia tying up its forces in Georgia. Russia will not be conquered in any new imperialist war. Its stock of nuclear weapons ensures that will not happen. But, it is a long way from that to the idea that Russia has the military, industrial or economic power to project itself across the globe, or even into western Europe. Its slow progress in Eastern Ukraine shows that.
Similarly, when NATO pushed forward again into Ukraine, despite the fact that support for NATO membership never rose above 40%, in Ukraine, and the West backed the coup against the pro-Russian government in 2014, it was inevitable that the ethnic Russians in Ukraine, particularly in Eastern Ukraine, which had always voted for closer ties with Russia, would see it as hostile, and that Russia would, again, be led to intervene. US imperialism/NATO has used this tactic numerous times. It used its links with Bin Laden to finance and arm the criminal of the KLA to stir up ethnic violence in Kosovo, to provoke intervention by Serbia, for example, which then gave it a pretext to attack Serbia, and split Kosovo away.
Even then, Russia seeking to avoid a prolonged military commitment, agreed to the Minsk Accords, designed to afford a large degree of self government to the ethnic Russian regions of Eastern Ukraine. But, Merkel, herself, admitted that the Minsk Accords were always intended to be a farce, designed only to give the Ukrainian state time to build up its forces. So, in the meantime, the reactionary nationalist regime in Kyiv, not only stepped up its attacks on ethnic Russians, in terms of cultural attacks on the Russian language etc., but never gave any degree of self-government, and used the forces of the Azov Battalion to launch military attacks, shelling and so on of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine. It gave Putin's reactionary regime no real choice in having to respond.
It is not Russian military forces sitting on the border of the UK or other western European states, ready to invade, it is, as it always has been British, French and other Western European military forces sitting on the border of Russia, and moving forward, wherever they can in what has always been an aggressive expansionist manner, as they seek to get their hands on Russian land and resources. So, when Boris Johnson basically bemoans the lack of progress of Ukraine in acting as its proxy to that end, despite the vast amounts of weapons and money given to it, he only blows the gaff on the western imperialist strategy all along, as he calls for young British workers to go and, once again lay down their lives for the benefit of the rich and powerful, for the same King and Country that has given you the likes of Prince Andrew, Lord Mandelson and all of the other leeches and perverts.
Engels (Marx), then, sets out a brief summary of the Tableau. I have dealt with Marx's presentation of it, elsewhere.
“As is known, the physiocrats divide society into three classes: (1) The productive class, i.e., the class which is actually engaged in agriculture — tenant-farmers and agricultural labourers; they are called productive, because their labour yields a surplus: rent. (2) The class which appropriates this surplus, including the landowners and their retainers, the prince and in general all officials paid by the state, and finally also the Church in its special character as appropriator of tithes. For the sake of brevity, in what follows we call the first class simply “farmers”, and the second class “landlords”. (3) The industrial or sterile class; sterile because, in the view of the physiocrats, it adds to the raw materials delivered to it by the productive class only as much value as it consumes in means of subsistence supplied to it by that same class. Quesnay's Tableau was intended to portray how the total annual product of a country (in fact, France) circulates among these three classes and serves annual reproduction.” (p 314)
At this point, its worth summarising what was correct and what was wrong in the Physiocratic theory. What was right was that surplus product/value is created in production, and not in the process of exchange. In that revolutionary discovery, the Physiocrats were ahead of both the Mercantilists, and of today's, orthodox economists, be they neoclassicists, Austrians, Keynesians or post-Keynesians, all of whom see profit arising from the process of exchange, as a “consumer surplus”. Adam Smith recognised this leap forward, made by the Physiocrats, and it formed the basis of his theory, and that of the rest of the Classical School. Again, it put Smith ahead of the Mercantilists, and of the later schools of orthodox economists.
What was wrong with the Physiocratic theory was its explanation of the source of this surplus product/value, created in production. Because, contrary to Duhring, the Physiocrats were primarily concerned with the production and circulation of the physical product/use-values, in a country – France – where agriculture dominated production, their attention focused on the difference between physical inputs and physical outputs.
In agriculture, superficially, this seems obvious. A certain amount of seed corn is planted, a certain amount of corn is fed to the farmer/worker, to reproduce their labour-power. Let us say 1 ton as seed, 1 ton as food for the farmer/labourer. But, at the end of the year, 3 tons of corn are produced, a surplus product of 1 ton. Where has it come from? For the Physiocrats, it is obviously a free gift of the land. Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, that Ramsay makes a similar error. In fact, even in terms of the physical product, the Physiocrats were wrong in thinking that the surplus arose out of nowhere, just from the land.
As well as the seed planted, the final output of corn involves a whole series of chemical processes, whereby other use-values – nutrients from the soil, water from rain, energy from sunlight – are incorporated in it. Its wrong, even on this basis, therefore, to say that the increase in the physical product arises from nowhere. It involves a whole series of processes whereby matter in one form is transformed into matter in a different form. It, also, involves a transformation of energy (sunlight, labour) into matter. So, Marx says, if all of these other use-values are taken into consideration, there is no magical increase in the total product, only a transformation of use-values in one form into use-values in a different form.
This is, in fact, entirely consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. An obvious illustration of this is to look at what happens during a drought. The land no longer magically produces a surplus product. Indeed, it may not even be able to reproduce the inputs themselves. The same is true, where there is not enough sunlight, or where the soil becomes depleted of nutrients. In these cases, rather than the land magically producing a surplus product, there may be negative reproduction. In other words, even restoring the initial scale of production may not be possible, or may require, if they exist, stocks to be used to restore that initial condition.
Engels notes that Duhring's statements, so far, have not taken the understanding of the Tableau forward one bit, “but now it is coming:
“On the other hand, however, now also”—this “however, now also” is a gem!—“the net product, enters into circulation as a natural object, and in this way becomes an element which should serve ... to maintain the class which is described as sterile. Here we can immediately (!) see the confusion arising from the fact that in one case it is the money value, and in the other the thing itself, which determines the course of thought”.” (p 312)
In fact, as Engels sets out, and as Marx describes, in Capital II, and Theories of Surplus Value, the Tableau describes the measurement of inputs and outputs, in the process of reproduction, both as physical quantities, “natural objects”, i.e. use-values, and as money values.
“Subsequently Quesnay even made his assistant, the Abbé Baudeau, include the natural objects in the Tableau itself, beside their money values.” (p 312)
Why? Because reproduction is about the reproduction of those use-values, the basis of continuing production, on at least the same scale, as the requirement to production on an expanded scale.
“After all this “input“, we at last get the “output”. Listen and marvel at these words:
“Nevertheless, the inconsistency“ (referring to the role assigned by Quesnay to the landlords) at once becomes clear as soon as we enquire what becomes of the net product, which has been appropriated as rent, in the course of economic circulation. Here the physiocrats and the economic Tableau could offer nothing but confusion and arbitrariness, culminating in mysticism”.” (p 312)
In other words, Duhring has to admit that he does not understand even the basis of Physiocratic theory, and the Tableau, and cannot see what happens to the “net product”, i.e. surplus product, appropriated as rent by the landlords. There is certainly error and some “mysticism” in Physiocratic theory, as set out by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, in that it describes this “surplus product”, which it equates with surplus value, to some innate property of the land. In Physiocratic theory, it is this property of the land to produce this surplus product, which is the basis of the owners of the land, the landlords, appropriating it as rent. But, its not true, as Duhring claims, to say that they or the Tableau does not describe what happens to it.
Engels quotes Duhring's statement,
““The lines which Quesnay draws to and fro” (in all there are just five of them!) “in his otherwise pretty simple” (!) “Tableau, and which are meant to represent the circulation of the net product”, make one wonder whether “these whimsical combinations of columns” may not be based on some mathematical fantasy; they are reminiscent of Quesnay’s attempts to square the circle” — and so forth.” (p 313)
“What this “economic image of the relations of production and distribution means in Quesnay himself,” he says, can only be explained if one has “first carefully examined the leading ideas which are peculiar to him”. All the more so because hitherto these have only been set forth with “wavering indefiniteness”, and their “essential features cannot be recognised” even in Adam Smith.” (p 310)
But, as Engels sets out, Duhring, in the following five pages, fails to put forward any new perceptions in respect of the Tableau, and presents only confusion and vagueness “such as, for example, “the difference between input and output”. Though the latter, “it is true, is not to be found complete in Quesnay's ideas”, Herr Dühring on the other hand will give us a dazzling example of it as soon as he passes from his lengthy introductory “input” to his remarkably short-winded “output” , that is to say, to his elucidation of the Tableau itself.” (p 311)
Engels quotes Duhring's “input”.
“It seemed self-evident to him” (Quesnay) “that the revenue” (Herr Dühring had just spoken of the net product) “must be thought of and treated as a money value ... He tied his deliberations” (!) “immediately with the money values which he assumed as the results of the sales of all agricultural products when they first change hands. In this way” (!) “he operates with several milliards (that is, with money values) in the columns of his Tableau” .” (p 311)
Engels stresses Duhring's repeated statement that there are only money values set out in The Tableau. The Tableau does indeed contain money values, just as Marx, in his own schemas of reproduction, in his depiction of the circuit of industrial capital, and so on, also uses money values. But, these money values are a shorthand, they represent the money equivalent of the actual physical product that must be reproduced. It assumes no change in the value of money, i.e. no inflation of prices, and no change in social productivity, i.e. no change in the value the commodities to be physically reproduced.
But, it is precisely because the Tableau, as with Marx's schemas, is about the reproduction of the physical product, that its real basis is as an input-output table of these physical quantities. As Marx puts it in Capital III, Chapter 49.
“If the productiveness of labour remains the same, then this replacement in kind implies replacing the same value which the constant capital had in its old form. But should the productiveness of labour increase, so that the same material elements may be reproduced with less labour, then a smaller portion of the value of the product can completely replace the constant part in kind.” (p 849)
In other words, if productivity rises so that the product of 100 hours of labour is 1,000 kilos of corn (seed), rather than 800 kilos of corn (seed), and to produce this corn (seed), 100 kilos of seed must be planted, it is this physical amount of seed (100 kilos) that must be replaced, as Marx noted, in response to Ramsay, and it, now, constitutes only 10% of the product, not 12.5%, as before.
Engels quotes Duhring further.
“Had Quesnay considered things from a really natural standpoint, and had he rid himself not only of regard for the precious metals and the quantity of money, but also of regard for money values...But as it is he reckons solely with sums of value, and imagined” (!) “the net product in advance as a money value”.” (p 311)
In these arguments of Duhring can, also, be seen the roots of the same errors made by the proponents of the TSSI, and use of historic prices.
Duhring says,
“He” (Quesnay) “obtained it” (the net product) “by deducting the expenses and thinking, (!) principally” (not traditional but for that matter all the more superficial reporting) “of that value which would accrue to the landlord as rent”.” (p 312)
Set aside the reference to “rent” as opposed to profit, and essentially, this is the process used by Ramsay, as described by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 22, which results in the “illusion” of profit arising from changes in prices, leading to a release of capital. It is also the argument of the TSSI based on the use of historic prices.
“But why is Hume given such an exaggerated position in Kritische Geschichte? Simply because this “serious and subtle thinker” has the honour of enacting the Dühring of the eighteenth century. Hume serves as proof that
“the creation of this whole branch of science” (economics) “is the achievement of a more enlightened philosophy”,
and similarly Hume as a precursor is the best guarantee that this whole branch of science will find its immediately foreseeable close, in that phenomenal man who has transformed the merely “more enlightened” philosophy into the absolutely luminous philosophy of reality, and with whom, just as with Hume, and what is
“ unprecedented on German soil … the cultivation of philosophy in the narrow sense of the word is combined with scientific endeavours in economics”.
Accordingly we find Hume, who in any case is respectable as an economist, inflated into an economic star of the first magnitude, whose importance could hitherto be denied only by the same envy which has hitherto so obstinately hushed up Herr Dühring's achievements, which are “authoritative for the epoch”.” (p 309-10)
Engels turns, then, to the Physiocrats, the Tableau Economique, and Duhrings treatment of it.
He writes,
“The Physiocratic school, as everyone knows, left us a riddle in the form of Quesnay’s Tableau économique on which all critics and historians of political economy have so far broken their teeth in vain. This Tableau, which was intended to bring out clearly the Physiocrats’ conception of the production and circulation of a country's total wealth, has remained pretty obscure for succeeding economists.” (p 310)
The Tableau was seen as a significant development by Marx, which shaped his own analysis of the integration of the process of production and circulation of commodities, money and capital, in Capital II and III, and his schemas of reproduction, rates of turnover and so on. It can be seen as an early form of input-output table.
Why is the mainstream media surprised that Starmer's Cabinet members, and other members of the government, came out to back him? Not to have done so would have been like Turkey's voting in favour of Christmas. The same is not true for other Labour MP's, or for the Labour Party itself, for whom Starmer and his Blue Labour government are thoroughly toxic. Unless the Labour Party, and the trades unions, which are, ultimately, the determining factor, get rid of Starmer and Blue Labour, it will be reduced to rubble, after the Spring elections, but that is, now, the least of the problems of Starmer and his government.
They are looking at the prospect of criminal investigations and prosecutions, as all of the revelations around Epstein, Maxwell, Mandelson and so on explode on to the public arena. The latest scandal of Starmer and Blue/New Labour appointing paedophiles and friends of paedophiles illustrates the point, but the real criminal activity they are seeking to keep hidden, is the support for war criminals and genocidal regimes, just as, also, the wider political crimes of the creation of totalitarian regimes, and use of ICE against US citizens has been successfully driven from the headlines.
Losing an election is never the end of the world for prominent government ministers. They can come back again, later, and, in the meantime, they are lined up for lucrative jobs in large corporations, and so on, which pay them far more than being an MP or Minister. Just look at the tens of millions pocketed by Blair and his family, since he ceased being Prime Minister. But, facing criminal prosecution is a totally different matter.
The problem that Starmer, and the rest of his Blue/New Labour government face is seen starkly in the events of the last few days. The Leader of Scottish Labour Anas Sarwar, facing annihilation in the forthcoming elections, came out to try to distance himself and Scottish Labour from the unfolding Starmer/Mandelson/Epstein scandal, but, in doing so, only invited questions into his own past associations with Mandelson.
It is, of course, not just, all of those politicians bound up in the New Labour project, and its, Third Way, US equivalent around Clinton, of the 90's, whose associations with Mandelson are now being raked over, but the whole sleazy, self-serving ecosphere that went with it, in the mainstream media. As with Trump's support for the genocidal regime in Israel, and his increasing use of totalitarian methods, those now being accused can rightly point back to the actions of their predecessors. That whataboutery takes ridiculous form, when the likes of Bondi and Patel appear before Congressional committees, and clearly does not offer any defence, but simply focussing on the actions of current governments, without looking at what went before, is, also, simply opportunism. It fails to understand how what went before paved the way for the present.
All of them now face the question of why, during all of the time that this was going on, and that everyone, in those circles, knew about it, did they not speak out? Why, even after the Epstein/Maxwell/Mandelson revelations became public knowledge, did they not use their very powerful public platforms to denounce the appointment of Mandelson, but, instead, continued to invite him on to their TV programmes, write in their newspapers, and to refer to him as their “old friend”? The reason is simple, to have done so would, then, have been to unravel the whole corrupt network of which it was a part, and would, consequently, have exposed them to investigation too. They play the role of courtiers.
Similarly, the attempt to portray this just as some aberration and a consequence of the actions of powerful men is also opportunistic and deflectionary. What about the roles of Maxwell? What about the role of the late Queen, who protected her favourite son, Prince Andrew, for decades, while knowing about these activities? What about the role of Fergie? What this is really about is the decadence of a global oligarchic elite, a tiny number of people so wealthy and powerful that they sit on top even of the global ruling-class, like a scum that has risen to the surface. It is not a question of gender, but of class, as a look at the activities of Catherine the Great illustrates. The "No Kings", movement in the US is more appropriate than its organisers even know.
Lenin, in writing about the utopian nature of the petty-bourgeois ideology of the Narodniks, pointed out that it is impossible to retain the conditions that existed in the society of peasant producers without also having the other social relations of feudal society. The 50% growth of the petty-bourgeoisie over the last 40 years has not just brought with it many of those same reactionary petty-bourgeois ideas, but has also brought with it a return to some of the social relations of pre-bourgeois society, though in a new form. It's important, therefore, to understand that this scum resting on top of the global ruling-class, which seeks to act in the same way that the absolute monarchs and their courtiers did, is neither the same as, and, indeed, is antagonistic to, the interests of the global ruling-class, and even more so of real industrial capital.
Sarwar can probably ride out the criticism of his own association with Mandelson, unless further revelations in that regard emerge. He is, after all, part of that same right-wing, political faction of the Labour Party spawned by Mandelson, and of which, also, Streeting is a part. For Sarwar, the priority was to try to distance Scottish Labour from Starmer and the Westminster government, ahead of the Spring elections, hence his repeated comments, in his speech, about his priority being “his country”, i.e. Scotland. That emphasis is much more important in Scotland than in Wales, but, as I wrote recently, its unlikely that any attempt by Labour candidates to separate themselves from the toxin of Starmer and Blue Labour will save them, at this stage.
Sarwar's speech has been portrayed as being a coup attempt by him and Streeting. That is unlikely. Streeting knows that the one who wields the knife rarely wears the crown. His best hope is that Starmer sacks him from the government, leaving him open to campaign more openly for the leadership after Labour is destroyed in the local elections, and in the by-election in Denton & Gorton. But, Streeting's own attempt to distance himself from Mandelson, by publishing his e-mail conversations with him, has, also, shown the problem for Blue/New Labour and its ecosphere, because, as Owen Jones has set out, in those e-mails, Streeting admits that Israel has been committing war crimes with the knowledge of the British government.
Of course, we all knew that Israel has been guilty of war crimes and genocide, and that the British, US and EU governments were lying through their teeth when they claimed not to know about it, as they all actively supported it, and armed it, whilst denouncing, purging and even gaoling those that acted against it! The desperation of the Zionists and their supporters in New/Blue Labour to remove Corbyn, and to utilise the lie that equates anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, now, becomes apparent and understandable, not because of any concern over the mildly progressive, social-democratic agenda of Corbyn, which is less radical than that of Wilson in the 1960's, and 70's, but, because of the threat it already posed to the web of lies and connections that ran through the whole project of New Labour, and of which Epstein and Mandelson were central, just as in the 1960's and 70's, Ghislane Maxwell's father, the tycoon and Labour MP, Robert Maxwell, played a similar role, as an agent of Mossad.
For Labour Ministers to have voted down Starmer, at this point, would have been the equivalent of turkeys voting for Christmas, not because of a threat to their jobs, but as a threat to their own liberty and future wealth. It is why Trump's supporters are so keen to ensure by whatever means that they rig the next election so as to not lose, just as Netanyahu has continued the war to avoid an election, and why Zelensky does the same in Ukraine. The mainstream media reported the last PLP meeting as having quashed any coup attempt, but its clear that that is not true. There are 404 Labour MP's, and only 200 people turned up to the PLP meeting, many of them being Labour peers, not MP's. Reports state that even infirm, elderly peers dragged themselves to their feet in repeated ovations to the Glorious Leader, Starmer. This looks like desperation not salvation.
Engels is making the point, here, alluded to earlier, of the distinction between money as measure of value and money tokens/currency. A requirement for a money commodity, such as gold, is that it does itself have value, which is why things like Bitcoin are not money. But, a money token is, indeed, only a token of value, and need have no value itself, as with base metal coins or paper notes. On this point, therefore, Hume was inferior to Petty, and many of his own contemporaries. He, also, retained some of the old mercantilist prejudices and notions, “that the “merchant” is the mainspring of production, which Petty had long passed beyond.” (p307)
Contrary to Duhring's claims about Hume's concern with the “chief economic relationships”, Engels says,
“if the reader only compares Cantillon’s work quoted by Adam Smith (which appeared the same year as Hume's essays, 1752, but many years after its author’s death), he will be surprised at the narrow field covered by Hume’s economic writings. As we have said, despite the letters-patent issued to him by Herr Dühring, Hume remains a respectable figure in the field of political economy too, but here he is anything but an original investigator, and even less an epoch-making one. The influence of his economic essays on the educated circles of his day was due not merely to his excellent presentation, but much more to the fact that they were a progressive and optimistic glorification of the thriving industry and trade of the time — in other words, of the capitalist society which was then rapidly rising in England, and whose “applause” they were therefore bound to gain.” (p 307-8)
Engels cites as an example of Hume's polemic in favour of indirect taxes. Without mentioning his name, Hume polemicises against Vanderlint, who was “the stoutest opponent of indirect taxation and the most determined advocate of a land tax.” (p 308) The system of indirect taxation – consumption taxes – was used ruthlessly by Sir Robert Walpole to benefit the landlords and the rich, at the expense of the masses, just as Trump seeks to do, today, with his use of tariffs, which are also a tax on consumption.
Engels quotes Hume.
“They” (taxes on consumption) “must be very heavy taxes, indeed, and very injudiciously levied, which the artisan will not, of himself, be enabled to pay, by superior industry and frugality, without raising the price of his labour.” (p 308)
Tax, as Marx notes, cannot change values or general level of prices, but is ultimately, therefore, a deduction from surplus value, as with interest and rent. They cause some prices to rise, but, equally, therefore, others to fall, as capital is reallocated to restore an average rate of profit.
Marx argued for direct taxes on income, as opposed to indirect taxes, not because of any concern for the supposed progressive nature of the former, but because he sought to limit the role of the state. He wrote,
“(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital.
b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. [In Marx's rough manuscript, French and German texts are: "because direct taxes are cheaper to collect and do not interfere with production".]
Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment.
Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.”
