As Engels sets out in his later Prefaces to The Condition of The Working Class, it is only the growth, and subsequent triumph, of large-scale, industrial capital that puts an end to most of these vices.
“in proportion as this increase took place, in the same proportion did manufacturing industry become apparently moralised. The competition of manufacturer against manufacturer by means of petty thefts upon the workpeople did no longer pay. Trade had outgrown such low means of making money; they were not worth while practising for the manufacturing millionaire, and served merely to keep alive the competition of smaller traders, thankful to pick up a penny wherever they could. Thus the truck system was suppressed, the Ten Hours’ Bill( was enacted, and a number of other secondary reforms introduced — much against the spirit of Free Trade and unbridled competition, but quite as much in favour of the giant-capitalist in his competition with his less favoured brother. Moreover, the larger the concern, and with it the number of hands, the greater the loss and inconvenience caused by every conflict between master and men; and thus a new spirit came over the masters, especially the large ones, which taught them to avoid unnecessary squabbles, to acquiesce in the existence and power of Trades’ Unions, and finally even to discover in strikes — at opportune times — a powerful means to serve their own ends. The largest manufacturers, formerly the leaders of the war against the working-class, were now the foremost to preach peace and harmony. And for a very good reason. The fact is that all these concessions to justice and philanthropy were nothing else but means to accelerate the concentration of capital in the hands of the few, for whom the niggardly extra extortions of former years had lost all importance and had become actual nuisances; and to crush all the quicker and all the safer their smaller competitors, who could not make both ends meet without such perquisites. Thus the development of production on the basis of the capitalistic system has of itself sufficed — at least in the leading industries, for in the more unimportant branches this is far from being the case — to do away with all those minor grievances which aggravated the workman’s fate during its earlier stages.”
This victory of large-scale, industrial capital, which, in the second half of the 19th century is inevitably socialised capital, and inextricably linked to the state, forms the material basis for the ideology of social-democracy, which replaces the earlier liberal democracy. But, the ideas upon which it is based, of a coincidence of interests between capital and labour, were to be found at the start of the 19th century, in the economics of Ricardo, but, also, in the ideas of the Utopian Socialists, such as Saint-Simon, Fourier and Owen. Indeed, Owen was the precursor of the later “functioning capitalist”, the day to day professional manager, that replaces the private capitalist owners. Social-democracy simply reflects in the realm of ideas this change in material conditions, represented by the dominance of socialised capital.
“At this time, however, the capitalist mode of production, and with it the antagonism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, was still very incompletely developed. industry, which had just arisen in England, was still unknown in France. But on the one hand large-scale industry promotes, the conflicts which make a revolution in the mode of production [and the abolition of its capitalist character] absolutely necessary - conflicts not only between the classes begotten of it, but also between precisely the productive forces and the forms of exchange created by it. On the other hand, it is in these gigantic productive forces themselves that it promotes the means of resolving these conflicts.” (p 329)
The sentiments expressed, here, are those expressed, also, in Capital III, Chapter 27, in relation to the development of large-scale, socialised capital, as a progressive and transitional form of property, a transition period within the confines of a continuation of capital and capitalist production, but in which its capitalist character is dissolved.
“2) The capital, which in itself rests on a social mode of production and presupposes a social concentration of means of production and labour-power, is here directly endowed with the form of social capital (capital of directly associated individuals) as distinct from private capital, and its undertakings assume the form of social undertakings as distinct from private undertakings. It is the abolition of capital as private property within the framework of capitalist production itself.
3) Transformation of the actually functioning capitalist into a mere manager, administrator of other people's capital, and of the owner of capital into a mere owner, a mere money-capitalist. Even if the dividends which they receive include the interest and the profit of enterprise, i.e., the total profit (for the salary of the manager is, or should be, simply the wage of a specific type of skilled labour, whose price is regulated in the labour-market like that of any other labour), this total profit is henceforth received only in the form of interest, i.e., as mere compensation for owning capital that now is entirely divorced from the function in the actual process of reproduction, just as this function in the person of the manager is divorced from ownership of capital.”
No comments:
Post a Comment