The Hypocrisy of NATO's Illegal War On Iran - Part 2

The introduction of national laws and rules, by the capitalist ruling-class, which created a “level playing field”, like all bourgeois right, is, as Marx describes it in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, a right not to equality, but inequality.

“But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labour in the same time, or can labour for a longer time; and labour, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labour. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.”

Marx is not even talking about the conditions existing under commodity production, or capitalist production, here, but about the conditions that would exist under socialism, in its initial phases. It is the critique of the fundamental flaw in the concept of meritocracy, which, inevitably entrenches the existing natural abilities of some as against others. Under capitalism, there is no material basis for society seeking to go beyond this “equality of right”, which inevitably means an inequality of outcomes, given the actual “inequality of being”. It is the fundamental flaw of welfarism, which purveys the idea that such “equality of outcome”, or, at least, a mollification of inequality can be achieved, by a complex, inefficient, bureaucratic and costly system of taxes and benefits, itself requiring huge numbers of people involved in its administration, who could have been more usefully employed.

And, this is true in terms of imperialism too. The developed, capitalist economies, with their existing masses of fixed capital, let alone their more advanced technology, produce commodities whose individual value is much lower than that of the same commodities produced by less advanced capitalist countries, that have less fixed capital, and less advanced technology. But, in the world market, as in every market, commodities are sold not at their individual value, but at their market value (if we ignore the question of prices of production), as Marx sets out in Capital I and III. The large, monopoly-capitalist (imperialist) producers, can always sell their commodities at lower prices, and so undercut their smaller competitors.

The large, monopoly-capitalist (imperialist) producers, thereby, obtain surplus profits (rents), even though they often sell their commodities at prices slightly below that of their smaller competitors, and despite the fact that they can, as Engels described above, and as Marx set out in Capital I, pay their workers much higher wages, and provide them with better conditions. Marx noted that European textile workers, were paid wages only half that of English textile workers, and yet English textile production persistently undercut the European producers, and provided higher profits for English producers.

Demanding that less developed economies abide by the same rules and regulations and standards as the advanced capitalist economies, within the confines of a continuation of global capitalism, is as utopian as the welfarist demands for equal outcomes, for unequal individuals. It is simply a manifestation of that petty-bourgeois, social-democratic, managerialist ideology that the interests of capital and labour are the same, and require only a negotiation as to the process of distribution. It imposes the false concept of the idea of “the people”, as though the entire historical process of the differentiation of that “people”, into “bourgeois” and “proletarians”, that took place at an accelerating pace, from the 15th century onwards, had never occurred.

Back To Part 1

Forward To Part 3

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 20 of 24

This is, again, magnified in the accelerated nature of the process seen in Russia, as detailed by Lenin. The growth of the bourgeoisie also sees the spread of bourgeois ideas. A look at England shows, for example, the way that the bourgeoisie begins to send its children to university. Those children, having done so, go on to take up positions in the state, as well as in the schools and universities themselves, so that they infuse those institutions with their own ideology. This goes on all the while that the political regime, itself, remains dominated by the landed aristocracy.

Even by the time of the 1832 Reform Act, only 2% of the population, in Britain, had the right to vote, which excluded, also, most of the bourgeoisie, more or less all of the petty-bourgeoisie, and of course, the whole of the emerging working-class. Even where the bourgeoisie did have votes, they were concentrated in the large towns and cities, which did not constitute parliamentary constituencies, as against the rotten boroughs, and concentration of seats in rural areas, dominated by the landed aristocracy. Even by the end of that century, parliament continued to be dominated by them, until such time that workers got the vote, and were pulled in, largely, behind the Liberal Party, as the representative of the newly developed, social-democratic alliance of large-scale industrial capital, and the industrial proletariat.

As Lenin described, in Russia, by the 1890's, its state was also dominated by the representatives of the bourgeoisie, and it was the interests of capital that dictated the actions of the state. Yet, it was still the old feudal-Asiatic class that dominated the Tsarist political regime.

“Trade on a large scale, that is to say, particularly international and, even more so, world trade, requires free owners of commodities who are unrestricted in their movements and as such enjoy equal rights; who may exchange their commodities on the basis of laws that are equal for them all, at least in each particular place. The transition from handicraft to manufacture presupposes the existence of a number of free workers — free on the one hand from the fetters of the guild and on the other from the means whereby they could themselves utilise their labour-power — workers who can contract with the manufacturer for the hire of their labour-power, and who hence, as parties to the contract, have rights equal to his.” (p 132)

And, so these requirements of capital and bourgeois society invariably come to dominate the actions of the state, i.e. of its permanent bureaucracy. Incidentally, talk of “the deep state” is just petty-bourgeois, conspiracist nonsense. What they really mean is just “the capitalist state”, i.e. the state of the bourgeois ruling-class, which, as a class state acts on behalf of that class, which is now a global ruling class, whichever party wins elections. It is the reality that Trump and Truss discovered, as they tried to pursue the interests of the petty-bourgeoisie to turn back the clock to the days prior to the dominance of imperialist capital, and the social-democratic state, and that Trump and Blue Labour are finding once more, as the global ruling class, again, uses its power via the global financial markets, to send interest rates higher, and their currencies lower, in response to their reactionary nationalist, petty-bourgeois agendas.

That is necessarily so, not just because the real human beings that make up that state bureaucracy are themselves bourgeois, but because the state must ensure its own survival, taken in its wider context. As Marx and Engels pointed out to Zasulich and Danielson, after Russia's defeat in the Crimean War, it recognised that it had to modernise, in order to compete with other capitalist states. It had to abandon its existing feudal-Asiatic production, and develop capitalist production.

“And finally the equality and equal status of all human labour, because and in so far as it is human labour, found its unconscious but clearest expression in the law of value of modern bourgeois political economy, according to which the value of a commodity is measured by the socially necessary labour embodied in it.” (p 132-3)

Back To Part 19

Forward To Part 21

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 19 of 24

With the fall of the Roman Empire, at the hands of the Goths and Vandals, even the limited egalitarianism it posited for freemen was swept away. In its place came a hierarchical social structure, which forms the basis of feudalism. It brought, “Western and Central Europe into the course of historical development, created a compact cultural area for the first time, and within this area also for the first time a system of predominantly national states influencing each other and mutually holding each other in check. It thus prepared the ground on which alone the question of the equal status of men, of the rights of man, could be raised at a later period.” (p 131)

As Marx noted in The Poverty of Philosophy, feudalism does not metamorphose into capitalism, nor do the serfs, as serfs, metamorphose into bourgeois and proletarians. A serf, as with a slave, can simply be reproduced for ever and a day, their surplus labour appropriated by the slave owner or feudal lord. It is not this relation that provides the dynamic of social development. Rather, it is the rupture of this relation. Once the serfs are freed, and the feudal retainers are disbanded, they are also separated from the means of production and consumption. In order to survive, they must find themselves some other source of income. They move to towns and cities in the Middle Ages, and use whatever skills they have developed from cottage industry to become independent commodity producers. As such, they come into competition with the existing feudal guild production, based on protectionism and guild monopolies. It is this activity of the former serfs, as, now, small scale commodity producers that leads to their development into a new bourgeois class.

“Originally itself a feudal estate, the bourgeoisie had developed the predominantly handicraft industry and the exchange of products within feudal society to a relatively high level, when at the end of the fifteenth century the great maritime discoveries opened up to it a new career of wider scope. Trade beyond the confines of Europe, which had previously been carried on only between Italy and the Levant, was now extended to America and India, and soon surpassed in importance both the mutual exchange between the various European countries and the internal trade within each individual country. American gold and silver flooded Europe and forced its way like a disintegrating element into every gap, fissure, and pore of feudal society. Handicraft industry could no longer satisfy the rising demand, in the leading industries of the most advanced countries it was replaced by manufacture.” (p 131-2)

By manufacture, here, is meant handicraft production, but, now, undertaken by several producers under one roof, as described by Marx in Capital, and by Lenin in The Development of Capitalism in Russia. These manufactories, set up, often, by merchant capitalists, or the larger handicraft producers themselves, already facilitate economies of scale. The size of building required does not increase proportionate to the volume of production, buying materials in larger quantities enables lower prices to be negotiated, savings on marketing are achieved, time required to get materials etc. from a stock room is reduced, but, also, it already enables a level of technical division of labour, and attendant increase in productivity.

That enabled this bourgeois production to undercut the old, feudal, guild production so that it continued to expand, despite the restrictions placed upon it. It does not arise as a metamorphosis of feudal production, but as, from the start, a separate species in competition with it.

“But this mighty revolution in the economic conditions of society was not followed by any immediate corresponding change in its political structure. The state order remained feudal, while society became more and more bourgeois.” (p 132)

Back To Part 18

Forward To Part 20

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 18 of 24

In this can be seen just how far Marx was from the views of the moralists and the welfarists, who present the false idea that bourgeois society can provide such equal right.

“In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labour, has vanished; after labour has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”

(ibid)

The moralists and welfarists say that, currently, not providing benefits for those with more than two children, for example, is to punish the children, but it is the parents that have those children without the means to provide for them that are actually the ones inflicting that punishment. There is a difference between equality of being, which forms the basis of bourgeois ideology of free and equal individuals meeting in the market on equal terms, and which, as Marx sets out above, continues even into the first stages of Socialism, as against the concept of equality of rights. The former is a lie, but the latter, the idea that we are all equally human, and so have equal human rights is one that has played a significant role in revolutionary struggles throughout history. As set out above, for the bourgeoisie, the idea of such equal human rights, in terms of political and legal rights, was central to its revolutionary struggle against the feudal aristocracy, “and which to this day still plays an important agitational role in the socialist movement of almost every country. The establishment of its scientific content will also determine its value for proletarian agitation.” (p 129)

Thousands of years elapsed before the idea that individuals, in society, should have equal political and legal rights.

“In the oldest, primitive communities, equality of rights could apply at most to members of the community; women, slaves and strangers were excluded from this equality as a matter of course. Among the Greeks and Romans the inequalities of men were of much greater importance than any equality. It would necessarily have seemed crazy to the ancients that Greeks and barbarians, freemen and slaves, citizens and denizens, Roman citizens and Roman subjects (to use a comprehensive term) should have a claim to equal political status.” (p 130)

Many of those distinctions disappeared, other than that between freemen and slave, which was fundamental to its mode of production. The equality of freemen, as property owners, became the basis of Roman Law, “the fullest elaboration we know of law based on private property. But so long as the antithesis between freemen and slaves existed, there could be no talk of drawing legal conclusions from a general human equality; we saw this again recently, in the slave states of the North American Union.” (p 130)

Indeed, as I have noted, elsewhere, as the US sociologist, Oliver Cromwell Cox, set out, it is the fact that the bourgeoisie espouses this concept of human equality, as the basis of its ideology and bourgeois society that means, in order to rationalise the enslavement of millions in the various colonial empires, established in the 17th century and after, by mercantilism, it must develop the ideology of racism, of the idea that those subjugated are less than human.

“Christianity knew only one equality on the part of all men, that of an equal possession of original sin, which corresponded perfectly to its character as the religion of the slaves and the oppressed. Apart from this it recognised, at most, the equality of the elect, which however was only stressed at the very beginning.” (p 131)

Indeed, in The New Testament, we find the story of how Jesus saw no reason to bestow his miracles on gentiles, when it came to healing a sick child. And, the Old Testament is replete with examples of the acceptance of inequality between men and women, who, like servants and slaves, were treated as chattels.

“The traces of common ownership which are also found in the early stages of the new religion can be ascribed to solidarity among the proscribed rather than to genuine equalitarian ideas. Within a very short time the establishment of the distinction between priests and laymen put an end to even this incipient Christian equality.” (p 131)

Back To Part 17

Forward To Part 19

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 17 of 24

In the first examples, the specific “fuel poverty” was a consequence of consumption decisions – food or kids – whereas, in these latter examples, its a consequence of inadequate income, to cover the cost of the reproduction of labour-power. In Capital, Marx sets out the objective basis of the value of labour-power. But, as with any such commodity value, it is based on what is socially necessary labour. A yarn spinner might, as Marx describes, use gold spindles rather than steel, but cannot, thereby, recover their value in the yarn they produce. Labour-power is no different. Given the standards of the time, workers need a certain quantity and quality of food, clothing, shelter, education and so on to reproduce their labour-power. If some choose to eat more, they can do so, but it does not change the value of that labour-power, reflected in their wages. It simply means they must consume less, or cheaper types of other wage goods.

Similarly, to reproduce labour-power, parents need to produce two children. If they choose to have three, four, six or twelve children, is also up to them, but does not increase the value of their labour-power, or entitle them to have it compensated in benefits paid for out of the taxes levied on other workers' wages, who make different consumption choices. The moralists protest that that means the right to have more than two children is, then, restricted to the rich/affluent. Well, yes,just as the right to live in a mansion, to own a yacht, jet or new Ferrari is restricted to those that can afford these consumption choices! That is the way capitalism works, and as Marx set out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, it is also the way Socialism would, initially, have to work, as it emerges from bourgeois society.

“Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society – after the deductions have been made – exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such-and-such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds); and with this certificate, he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour cost. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another.

Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values. Content and form are changed, because under the altered circumstances no one can give anything except his labour, and because, on the other hand, nothing can pass to the ownership of individuals, except individual means of consumption. But as far as the distribution of the latter among the individual producers is concerned, the same principle prevails as in the exchange of commodity equivalents: a given amount of labour in one form is exchanged for an equal amount of labour in another form.”

(Marx – Critique of The Gotha Programme)

But, Marx notes the points set out above. Besides the fact that one worker is stronger, fitter etc., and so doing 8 hours of labour is easier for them than for another worker who is not so strong, or fit (i.e. whose ability to labour is less) one worker may have two children that need feeding clothing and so on, whilst the other does not. Yet, both workers would receive back from society the same equivalent of 8 hours labour, meaning that one worker has contributed less, in terms of their ability to labour, whilst the other also, receives less, relative to their needs, because they need to also provide for two children. This is only something that can be addressed, as a socialist society so raises social productivity so that an increasing proportion of the social product can be distributed on the basis of need.

Until that time,

“... it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only – for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored. Further, one worker is married, another is not; one has more children than another, and so on and so forth. Thus, with an equal performance of labour, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on. To avoid all these defects, right, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.”

(ibid)

Back To Part 16

Forward To Part 18

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 16 of 24

In developed economies, themselves, we see how far we still are, necessarily, from that idea of “from each according to their ability” (often misrepresented by reformists and welfarists as “ability to pay”, i.e. higher taxes) in the fact that bourgeois, trades union consciousness still seeks to base collective bargaining (i.e. haggling over the price of labour-power, or how much workers are to be exploited) on the protection of differentials. The irony of that, of course, is that one consequence of the maintenance of such differentials between skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers is differences, then, in workers' household incomes, which, then, are intended to be ameliorated by the capitalist state, which sets up a whole bureaucratic apparatus of welfarism, draining resources for no other purpose than to administer this welfare, as alms, which, also, provides it with a mechanism of social control, which provides benefits to the poorer households, which would not have been required had their real wages been higher to begin with, and covers the cost of these benefits by raising taxes on better paid workers, which itself sets up a division and antagonism within the working-class itself, utilised, also, as a means of social control.

In other words, the trades unions insist on the pay differentials of their skilled workers being maintained, but, also, collectively demand that the capitalist state protect the living standards of their unskilled members via the welfare system, which it funds by taxes on the incomes of those better paid, skilled workers who, thereby, lose a considerable portion of the benefit of that pay differential, and all of which involves the unnecessary employment of large numbers of state bureaucrats to collect those taxes, keep records, and pay benefits, who could, otherwise, have been employed productively! The social democrats and reformist socialists justify this welfarism on the basis of the idea that it is redistributing income from “the rich”, but, as Marx and Engels showed, that is not possible. The relation between the revenues received by the owners of capital (real industrial capital, or fictitious capital) and workers is, ultimately, objectively determined, whether the revenues of workers take the form of actual money wages, or the social wage. In summary, it is determined by the value of labour-power, which is why capital always seeks to raise productivity so as to reduce that value of labour-power, i.e. to reduce the proportion of the working-day required as necessary labour to reproduce the worker. If due to market conditions, in the short run, workers' revenues (wages/social wage, i.e. relative wages) rise, and consequently, relative profits fall, this leads inexorably to a crisis of overproduction of capital, causing capital to first throw labour on to the streets, and secondly to engage in a technological revolution, which replaces labour with machines, which then results in relative wages falling.

The extension of this absurd concept of welfarism is the concept of so called specific types of poverty, such as fuel poverty, food poverty, housing poverty, child poverty, and so on, all of which, of course, provides the basis for a gaggle of middle-class people to be employed in campaigns, and quangos resting upon the need to deal with each, rather than a recognition that they are all simply a manifestation, not of some specific poverty, but of poverty itself, or more correctly, a lack of income! If we take someone with an income of £500 a week who spends £300 a week eating well, £150 on the cost of shelter and £40 on other things, leaving them with £10 to cover energy, whilst their fuel bill is £20, they would be in “fuel poverty”. However, they could have spent less on food, and so paid their fuel bill.

Likewise, they may have six kids so that the £300 food bill is a minimum required, whilst they must, also, now, spend the £40 they spent on themselves on their kids, leaving them, in “fuel poverty”, and probably “child poverty” too. Yet, in both cases, the “poverty” was a consequence of particular choices of how to spend their income – food in the first case, six kids in the second. However, if the household income is only £300 a week, they may spend, say, only the minimum amount of £100 on food, have no kids, spend the minimum £150 on shelter, and a minimum £40 on other necessities, still leaving them in “fuel poverty”, or they could pay the fuel bill, and spend less on food, then being in “food poverty”.

Back To Part 15

Forward To Part 17

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 15 of 24

There is, then, a difference between equality of being, and equality of rights. As Marx sets out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, the bourgeoisie established the concept of equality on the basis of the equality of being, and a consequent equality of rights. It was revolutionary, precisely because, at the time, there was no concept of such equality. The higher echelons of society were considered superior beings, only a step down from God, with the rest of society occupying ever lower rungs on that ladder. Similarly, those at the top had rights according to their station, and those at the bottom effectively had no rights at all.

In establishing the idea of equality of being, the bourgeoisie broke down the basis of this ordering of society and the social relations, based on it, along with its political and juridical superstructure. It broke down the privileged position of the feudal guild production, with all of its protectionism and monopolies, for example, and posited all commodity owners as free and equal individuals, meeting on equal terms in the market. And, alongside this, it posited, and demanded, therefore, equal political and legal rights – the right to vote, and to equal standing before the law.

But, whilst this was revolutionary compared to feudal society, it was also based upon the lie set out above. Individuals are not all equal/the same. Some have greater needs than others, some have greater abilities, and, thereby, obligations than others. Yet, as Marx sets out in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, if this is to be acknowledged, and acted upon, as set out in the principle “From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”, it would require a vast increase in social productivity, so that, indeed, those with the greatest abilities, strength, intelligence and so on contribute fully, but also freely to social production, without concern for proportional recompense, and that those with the greatest needs, for example, those with children, are able to take from social production to meet them, without the requirement to contribute in equal measure.

As Marx notes, even the initial socialist society, emerging from bourgeois society, could not do that. Far from it, which makes all of the moralism of the welfarists and reformists idealist and utopian nonsense that, actually, is, thereby, reactionary, and stands in the way of the transition to Socialism. In The Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx set this out in relation to the demands of the Lassalleans, at that time, for free, universal education and an end to child labour etc. Capitalism itself, in the developed economies, has so raised productivity, and changed the nature of labour that the first not only became possible, but necessary, whilst the second continues, as seen in the thousands of children that provide free social care in the home to parents and others. But, in the developing economies, Marx's argument against he Lassalleans still applies, and yet the liberals and moralists demand the same rights, in those countries as those only now made possible in developed economies, by their much higher productivity and wealth.

This is simply a reflection of the extent to which bourgeois ideology, and its concept of equality of being is pervasive, even though its clear that no such equality is possible or desirable, because if everyone were truly equal/the same, as in Duhring's abstraction, it would mean no diversity of being, with everyone reduced to the same grey clone of everyone else. Here, that equality of being is not viewed from the standpoint of the individual, but of the economy itself. In other words, the economy of Bangladesh is put on the same equal level as the economy of, say, Britain, and, thereby, expected to provide the same rights to its citizens in terms of education, child-labour, wages and conditions and so on, even though this is clearly impossible. The same applies in respect to its obligations in regard to environmental considerations. It, thereby, necessarily disadvantages the Bangladeshi economy compared to developed economies, and is itself a manifestation of imperialism, and of combined and uneven development.

Back To Part 14

Forward To Part 16

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 14 of 24

Engels notes that at least Kaufman had not been so cruel as to claim that he was slaughtering the Yomuds to respect them and return them to the true path.

“Once again in this conflict it is the elect, those who claim to be acting in accordance with truth and science and therefore in the last resort the philosophers of reality, who have to decide what are superstition, prejudice, brutality and perversity of character and when force and subjection are necessary for purposes of equalisation. Equality, therefore, is now — equalisation by force; and the second will is recognised by the first to have equal rights through subjection.” (p 128)

As I have set out, elsewhere, in the same way, the subjectivism and petty-bourgeois moralism of the petty-bourgeois Third Camp is also manifest in the fact that one section of it sets as their guiding principle their categorical imperative, the opposition to imperialism, and the other their opposition to authoritarianism, and, in each case, to will the end is to will the means.  It means politics determined by lesser-evilism.

Engels notes that this concept expressed by Duhring, essentially meaning being forced to be free, or here, “forcible equalisation is only a distortion of the Hegelian theory, according to which punishment is the right of the criminal” (p 128) For Hegel, it means recognising the criminal as also being a rational being, who, as Kant described, in the Categorical Imperative, must recognise that their actions were irrational.

From the basis of two equal, sovereign wills, Duhring concludes the requirement for a third, because otherwise, there is no means of arriving at majority decisions, and it is this which, then, forms the basis of the state to enforce those majority decisions. Duhring, then, proceeds from this basis to elaborate his schema for “the construction of his socialitarian state of the future where one fine morning we shall have the honour to look him up.” (p 129)

As with the pure mathematical abstraction of the point, which cannot exist in the real world, Duhring's pure human will, as an abstraction, cannot exist in the real world. As soon as we examine real human wills, even Duhring is led to set up a series of exceptions in which they are not equal.

“... that childhood, madness, so-called bestiality, alleged superstition, assumed prejudice and putative incapacity on the one hand, and pretensions to humanity and knowledge of truth and science on the other — that therefore every difference in the quality of the two wills and in that of the intelligence associated with them justifies an inequality which may go as far as subjection.” (p 129)

Individuals, clearly, are not equal/the same, as Engels, here, and Marx, in The Critique of The Gotha Programme, establish. Some are strong, others weak, some clever, some not, some have children others do not. As Marx sets out in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, therefore, to treat them as though they are all equal/the same is actually to treat them differently. It is to expect the weak individual to work as hard as the strong, in manual labour, the not so clever as hard as the clever in mental labour, and for the individual with children to be able to live on the same wages as the individual with no children.

Back To Part 13

Forward To Part 15

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 13 of 24

Duhring's third retreat relates to the mental faculties of individuals. He says,

“If one man acts in accordance with truth and science, and the other in accordance with some superstition or prejudice, then ... as a rule mutual interference must occur... At a certain degree of incompetence, brutality or perversity of character, conflict is always inevitable... It is not only children and madmen in relation to whom the ultimate resource is force. The character of whole natural groups and cultural classes of human beings may inexorably necessitate the subjection of their will, which is hostile because of its perversity, if it is to be led back to the common social ties. Even in such cases the alien will is still recognised as having equal rights; but the perversity of its injurious and hostile activity has provoked an equalisation, and if it is subjected to force, it is only reaping the reaction to its own unrighteousness”. (p 127)

Again, this merges with the racist nature of the second retreat, because the enslavement of millions in the colonial empires, created from the 17th century onwards, by mercantilism, was justified on the basis that those enslaved and denied equality was that they were sub-human, either morally or intellectually.

“So not only moral but also mental inequality is enough to remove the “complete equality” of the two wills and to call into being a morality by which all the infamous deeds of civilised robber states against backward peoples, down to the Russian atrocities in Turkestan, can be justified. When in the summer of 1873, General Kaufmann ordered the Tatar tribe of the Yomuds to be attacked, their tents to be burnt and their wives and children butchered — “in the good old Caucasian way”;, as the order was worded — he, too, declared that the subjection of the hostile, because perverted, will of the Yomuds, had become an inexorable necessity if it were to be led back to the common social ties, that the means he employed were best suited to the purpose, and that whoever willed the end had also to will the means.” (p 127-8)

And, today, the same morality denies equality to Palestinian lives, and defends Zionist genocide committed against them, on the basis of a right to self-defence by the imperialist, Zionist state in Israel, and, whoever wills that end, also wills the means. The Zionist state, backed by NATO imperialism, also proclaims that its genocide against Palestinians is really, also, for their own good, protecting their own rights against the restriction of those rights by Hamas. Imperialist military intervention is always cloaked in these kind of terms of “liberation from above”, as Trotsky described in relation to the Balkan Wars.

“Our agitation, on the contrary, against the way that history's problems are at present being solved, goes hand in hand with the work of the Balkan Social Democrats. And when we denounce the bloody deeds of the Balkan 'liberation' from above we carry forward the struggle not only against liberal deception of the Russian masses but also against enslavement of the Balkan masses.”

(Trotsky – The Balkan Wars, p 293-4)

“'Free'! And to whom, pray, are the Macedonians to pay the costs of their 'liberation'? And exactly how much do these costs amount to? How easily people operate with words, and now with living concepts, when they are not involved themselves! You, Ivan Kirillovich, say that peace is not an end in itself and so on, but you are letting your vision of reality be obscured. 'Free'! Have you any idea what the areas that were recently the theatre of war have been turned into? All through those places a terrible tornado has raged, which has torn up, broken, mangled, reduced to ashes everything that man's labour had created, has maimed and crushed man himself, and mortally laid low the young generation, down to the baby at the breast and even further to the foetus in the mother's womb. The Turks burned and massacred as they fled. The local Christians, where they had the advantage, burned and slaughtered as the allied armies drew near. The soldiers finished off the wounded, and ate up or carried off everything they could lay their hands on. The partisans, following at their heels, plundered, violated, burned. And, finally, along with the armies, epidemics of typhus and cholera advanced across the 'liberated' land.”

(ibid, p 330)

The same was seen a few years later, as Trotsky predicted, in WWI, and, then, after a brief pause, its continuation in WWII. When US imperialism destroyed much of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, including the use of Agent Orange, whose effects continued for decades, and even considered the use of atomic bombs, they also claimed it was done for the benefit of the Vietnamese, a claim that the mentors of today's petty-bourgeois Third Camp endorsed. So, too with the slaughter of a million Iraqis, the destruction of Libya, the death of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, and Palestinians.

Back To Part 12

Forward To Part 14

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 12 of 24

But, even if we set all that aside, and assume a state of general equality and uniformity, Duhring is still left with the need to recognise that not all are equal. He says,

“There are also cases of “permissible dependence”, but these can be explained “on grounds which are to be sought not in the activity of the two wills as such, but in a third sphere, as for example in regard to children, in the inadequacy of their self-determination”.” (p 125)

Engels notes this as “Retreat No. 1” from Duhring's absolute and universal truth, in relation to the construction of a system of morals and laws. There are further such retreats. Duhring's second retreat starts from a peculiar argument relating to “beast” and “man”, in which individuals are a blend of the two in varying proportions. He says,

“Where beast and man are blended in one person the question may be asked, on behalf of a second, entirely human, person, whether his mode of action should be the same as if only human persons, so to speak, were confronting each other ... our hypothesis of two morally unequal persons, one of whom in some sense or other has something of the real beast in his character, is therefore the typical basic form for all relations which may come about in accordance with this difference, ... within and between groups of people”. (p 126)

This argument is particularly objectionable to us, today, because of its racist undertones. It is the basis of colonialism, and, as Engels described, is used by Duhring “to determine casuistically how far the human man can interfere with the bestial man, how far he may show distrust and employ stratagems and harsh, nay terrorist means, as well as deception against him, without himself deviating in any way from immutable morality.” (p 126)

Racists and colonialists, like Churchill, used it to justify the enslavement of millions across the Empire, to argue for machine-gunning, gassing and starving anyone who resisted. Of course, Churchill, also, viewed British workers such as the Welsh miners in Tonypandy, in not much higher regard.

“So, equality also ceases when two persons are “morally unequal”. But then it was surely not worth while to conjure up two completely equal people, for there are no two persons who are completely equal morally. — But the inequality is supposed to consist in this: that one person is human and the other has a streak of the beast in him.” (p 126)

Humans are animals, too, but are separated from the animal kingdom by the power to reason, and, thereby, to develop laws and morals, as well as to change the material conditions of their existence. The less developed the latter, the less able are humans to be truly human, and the more they are conditioned and constrained by their nature as animals. The basic animal instinct is to survive, procreate, eat, dominate. It is not some inherent difference in the morality of individuals, reflecting a difference in the genetic blend of beast and man, but the material conditions of existence that are determinant.

“Apart from the philosophy of reality, a division of mankind into two sharply differentiated groups, into human men and bestial men, into good and bad, sheep and goats, is only to be found in Christianity, which quite logically also has its judge of the universe to make the separation. But who is to be the judge of the universe in the philosophy of reality?” ( p 126-7)

Back To Part 11

Forward To Part 13

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 10 of 24

Duhring, however, bases a lot of his further argument on these two equal members of society, which Engels says, plays a similar role to that of the inhabitants of other planets, used by Duhring. In other words, what can be applied to them must, then, be applicable universally and eternally.

“Whenever a question of economics, politics etc., is to be solved, the two men instantly march up and settle the matter in the twinkling of an eye “axiomatically”. An excellent, creative and system-building discovery on the part of our philosopher of reality. But unfortunately, if we want to pay homage to truth, the two men are not his discovery. They are the common property of the whole eighteenth century.” (p 123)

They are to be found in Rousseau's Discours On Inequality (1754), and in the writing of Smith and Ricardo. In fact, Engels notes, for Rousseau, they prove the opposite of what Duhring asserts, and, for Smith and Ricardo, they are unequal in the sense of pursuing different occupations, as the basis of the exchange of commodities between them. For these theorists of the 18th century, however, such individuals serve merely an illustrative purpose to provide a simplified example of a basic concept.

“... Herr Dühring’s originality consists only in elevating this method of illustration into a basic method for all social science and a yardstick for all historical forms. Certainly it would be impossible to simplify the “strictly scientific conception of things and men any further”.” (p 123)

Rather, as with the abstractions previously discussed, such as the “point” in space and time, these Duhringian individuals cannot exist in the real world.

“They must be two people who are so thoroughly free from all reality, from all the national, economic, political and religious relations present in the world, from all sexual and personal characteristics, that nothing is left of either of them beyond the mere concept: human being, and then of course they are “completely equal”.” (p 123-4)

As other-worldly phantoms, these pure abstractions can serve whatever function Duhring, or anyone else, using this method, seeks to place upon them.

Its worth explaining the terms used in Duhring's argument, and Engels' response, to avoid confusion. Duhring posits these two individuals (men), each with an equal will. By will, here, is really meant an abstract right, so that, if both are equal, neither can demand anything of the other. It does not mean that one is strong-willed and the other weak-willed. Will could be replaced, in this context, by “desire”. This is important, here, and for Duhring's argument later, in which he explains the history of society, and the existence of inequality, injustice, exploitation and oppression on the basis of force. In other words, it is, again, a moralistic argument, reliant on subjectivism.

“The two wills can demand positively nothing from each other. Nevertheless, if one of them does so and has its way by force, this gives rise to a state of injustice; and it is by this fundamental scheme that Herr Dühring explains injustice, tyranny, servitude — in short, the whole reprehensible history of the past.” (p 124)

Engels notes that Rousseau had disproved this argument. Rousseau's argument is also used by liberals and libertarians, who claim that the world basically divides into those who are naturally entrepreneurial, willing to take risks etc., and those who are not. The former become employers, and the latter employed. Of course, this fails to account for the fact that, for millennia, there were no such employers nor employed, and that, under feudalism, that was also true, with the vast majority being self-sustaining peasants.

Rousseau argued that A cannot enslave B by force, but only by making himself indispensable to B. This is also the foundation of the argument put forward by liberals, in which the employers (capital) is indispensable to the employed (labour), because, without the employer providing capital (means of production and consumption) the workers cannot work. Of course, again, this does not explain why, then, for millennia, there were no such employer, and, indeed, no capital, and yet society continued along just fine without them, and proceeded not only to produce and increase its means of consumption, but also to increase and develop its means of production too. It does not explain how this situation, then, ceases to exist, and these means of production and consumption become centralised in the hands of just a few individuals. Duhring's answer to this is force, and this moralistic and subjectivist argument is echoed in the arguments of moralists down to today.

“Let us put the same thing in a slightly different way. Two shipwrecked people are alone on an island, and form a society. Formally, their wills are completely equal, and this is acknowledged by both. But from a material standpoint there is great inequality. A has determination and energy, B is irresolute, lazy and flabby. A is quick-witted, B stupid. How long will it be before A regularly imposes his will on B, first by persuasion, later by dint of habit, but always in a voluntary form?” (p 124)

Back To Part 9

Forward To Part 11

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 9 of 24

Proudhon arrived at a view of history similar to that presented by Rousseau in The Social Contract, whereby the free individual makes a contract with other such individuals to establish society based on a set of legal rules designed for their mutual advantage. Duhring does a similar thing.

“Herr Dühring thus splits society up into its simplest elements, and discovers in doing so that the simplest society consists of at least two people. With these two people he then proceeds to operate axiomatically. And so the basic moral axiom spontaneously presents itself:

“Two human wills are as such completely equal to each other, and in the first place one can demand positively nothing from the other”. This “characterises the basic form of moral justice”, and equally that of legal justice, for “we need only the utterly simple and elementary relation of two persons for the development of the fundamental concepts of right”.” (p 121-2)

Rousseau's concept of the free individual, living outside society is a bourgeois, liberal myth, because no such state ever existed. Humans have always lived in some form of society. Even if we take the fictional character of Robinson Crusoe, based on the life of Alexander Selkirk, Crusoe did not appear ready formed on his island, but was a product of society, before being shipwrecked. The same is true of Proudhon's individual, and, here, too, of Duhring's. Society does not arise out of some agreement between formerly separated individuals, and class society certainly does not represent some voluntary association of free and equal individuals.

“Not only is it not an axiom that two people or two human wills are as such completely equal to each other it is actually a great exaggeration. In the first place, two people, even as such, may be unequal in sex, and this simple fact leads us on at once to the conclusion that the simplest elements of society — if we enter into this childishness for a moment — are not two men, but a man and a woman, who found a family, the simplest and first form of association for the purpose of production.” (p 122)

Engels notes that this does not suit Duhring's purpose, because the two families must be made as equal as possible. It can only be rationally understood as two heads of households, otherwise, procreation and the continuation of society is not possible. Engels proceeds on the basis of two male heads of households, but his research based on the work of Morgan, showed that, originally, these households had female heads, in a system of matriarchy. One reason for that was that, in consanguineous families, based on polygamy, actual lineage could could only be definitively attributed via the mother. The same logic applies, however. Reproduction could no more proceed from a society of just two women than it could two men.

“Consequently, one thing or the other: either the Dühringian social molecule, by the multiplication of which the whole of society is to be built up, is doomed from the first, because two men can never by themselves bring a child into the world; or we must think of them as two heads of families. And in that case the whole simple basic scheme is turned into its opposite: instead of the equality of people it proves at most the equality of heads of families, and as women are not consulted, it further proves that they are subordinate.” (p 122)

Back To Part 8

Forward To Part 10

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 8 of 24

Ironically, given the original usage of the term “Third Camp”, by Lenin and Trotsky, to mean the independent camp of the proletariat as against one or other camp of warring imperialists, in WWI, and the attempt by the social-patriots and social-imperialists to drive workers into support for their own bourgeois ruling class, the Third Camp of the petty-bourgeoisie, does the exact opposite, as most clearly seen in recent times, in the support for NATO imperialism, and the imperialist state in Ukraine, in their war against Russian imperialism. It again forces the global proletariat to forego its own interests and to line up behind one of these two opposing camps of the bourgeoisie, distinguished only by these superficial political facades of “democracy” or “authoritarianism”. The AWL is the manifestation of this second trend.

The irrationality becomes manifest in the Ukraine-Russia war where the AWL/USC claim not only to be opposing Russian authoritarianism, but also imperialism, and do so by lining up behind NATO/Ukrainian imperialism, i.e. a reductio ad absurdum, in which “anti-imperialism” is also “pro-imperialism”. In reality, as Trotsky's analysis of the Chinese revolution showed, “anti-imperialism”, where it is not in the form of an independent proletarian struggle for socialist revolution, via permanent revolution, is always based upon an alliance with, and so subordination to, some other imperialism. He also made that point in relation to Ukraine, and to Czechoslovakia.

“Only hopeless pacifist blockheads are capable of thinking that the emancipation and unification of the Ukraine can be achieved by peaceful diplomatic means, by referendums, by decisions of the League of Nations, etc. In no way superior to them of course are those “nationalists” who propose to solve the Ukrainian question by entering the service of one imperialism against another. Hitler gave an invaluable lesson to those adventurers by tossing (for how long?) Carpatho-Ukraine to the Hungarians who immediately slaughtered not a few trusting Ukrainians. Insofar as the issue depends upon the military strength of the imperialist states, the victory of one grouping or another can signify only a new dismemberment and a still more brutal subjugation of the Ukrainian people, The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score.

The worker and peasant masses in the Western Ukraine, in Bukovina, in the Carpatho-Ukraine are in a state of confusion: Where to turn? What to demand? This situation naturally shifts the leadership to the most reactionary Ukrainian cliques who express their “nationalism” by seeking to sell the Ukrainian people to one imperialism or another in return for a promise of fictitious independence.”

(Problem of the Ukraine)

“It is impermissible to consider a war between Czechoslovakia and Germany, even if other imperialist states were not immediately involved, outside of that entanglement of European and world imperialist relations from which the war might have broken out as an episode. A month or two later the Czech-German war – if the Czech bourgeoisie could fight and wanted to fight – would almost inevitably have involved other states. It would therefore be the greatest mistake for a Marxist to define his position on the basis of temporary conjunctural diplomatic and military groupings, rather than on the basis of the general character of the social forces standing behind the war.”

(Social-Patriotic Sophistry, subtitled The Question of the Defense of Czechoslovakia’s “National Independence”)

Back To Part 7

Forward To Part 9

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 7 of 24

Engels asks how the method of Duhring, then, constructs the system of morals, and laws of society. He does not start from the real relations in society, and so the material available for such a construction consists of two kinds.

“... first, the meagre residue of real content which may possibly survive in the abstractions from which he starts and, second, the content which our ideologist reintroduces from his own consciousness.” (p 121)

That is, essentially, the same approach taken by Proudhon, and discussed by Marx in The Poverty of Philosophy.

“And what does he find in his consciousness? For the most part, moral and legal notions which are a more or less accurate expression (positive or negative, corroborative or antagonistic) of the social and political relations amidst which he lives; perhaps also ideas drawn from the literature on the subject; and finally maybe some personal idiosyncrasies. Our ideologist may twist and turn as he likes, but the historical reality which he cast out at the door comes in again at the window, and while he thinks he is framing a doctrine of morals and law for all times and for all worlds, he is only fashioning an image of the conservative or revolutionary tendencies of his day — an image which is distorted because it has been torn from its real basis and, like a reflection in a concave mirror, is standing on its head.” (p 121)

Proudhon believed that the guiding principle, the nirvana to which all contradictions lead, via a process of, at each stage, choosing the lesser of two-evils, was equality. But, Marx indicated that others may choose some other guiding principle to fulfil that role.

“... we refer him to the Histoire de l’économie politique of M. de Villeneuve-Bargemont, who likewise goes in pursuit of a providential aim. This aim, however, is not equality, but Catholicism.”

(The Poverty of Philosophy, p 112)

As I have noted, elsewhere, today's petty-bourgeois moral socialists of the Third Camp operate on the same basis. One section of that trend identifies “imperialism” as the greater evil, to be opposed, and so the “lesser-evil” set against it is “anti-imperialism”, even where that “anti-imperialism” takes the form of reactionary, anti-working class forces and regimes, as, for example, Iranian mullahs, Islamists and jihadists, and so on. The SWP and its splinters are the representatives of that trend.

Another section of the Third Camp of the petty-bourgeoisie, as Trotsky called them, takes the opposite moral stance. It sees authoritarianism in its many guises as the greater evil, be it that first identified by the founders of that trend, Burnham and Shachtman, i.e. Stalinism, or those later forms of authoritarianism and reaction in the shape of the clerical-fascists. They consequently, as did Burnham and Shachtman, posit bourgeois-democracy and “democratic imperialism”, as the lesser-evil to be supported against it. In both cases, it amounts to renouncing the independent, and historic role of the working-class as agent of revolutionary change, and, instead, subordinating it, via some form of Popular Front, to one or other section of the bourgeoisie or petty-bourgeoisie.

Back To Part 6

Forward To Part 8

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 6 of 24

If a company fails, the private capitalist loses their capital, and source of income, and the day to day managers of companies, production managers etc., paid salaries, lose their jobs along with other workers. But, shareholders, who have taken out in dividends and capital transfers, over several years, far more than they paid for the shares that enabled them to do that, simply take all of that and use it to speculate in the shares of some other company, or financial asset. The Directors are in the same position, and never stay at any company for long, as well as usually getting millions of pounds when joining or leaving a company, and often holding Directorships in several companies at the same time.

Huge monopolies have similarly huge balance sheets, so that the process of effectively asset stripping the company, by excessive amounts of dividends or capital transfers, can go on for a long time, before the company fails, and, as seen, often, when that happens, the capitalist state intervenes to bail it out. That is what the Attlee government did, in Britain, after WWII, with its nationalisation programme of all those core industries, in transport, energy and so on that had been bled dry by shareholders in the previous decades. Its what happened with the nationalisation of banks after 2008, and with the big car companies in the US. Once recapitalised by the capitalist state out of taxes, the companies are sold back to the same ruling-class of speculators that bled them dry in the first place.

But, also, in the 1980's, and 90's, as the new technological revolution produced by the microchip resulted in a huge rise in the mass and rate of profit, companies could, for a long time, fund any real capital accumulation out of those profits, whilst still leaving large amounts that could be paid out as dividends. As I have set out before, the technological revolution massively reduced the value of fixed capital, and large swathes of circulating constant capital, producing a huge release of capital. So, any given mass of profit represents a significant rise in the rate of profit. But, as wages fell, so the mass of profit also rose.

A greater mass of profit, with proportionally less of it required for capital accumulation, i.e. the supply of money-capital rises relative to the demand for it, causes the rate of interest to fall. Falling interest rates lead to higher capitalised values of assets, and falling yields, but shareholders, then, respond by increasing dividends, hence dividends go from 10% of profits in the 1970's, to 70%, today, and, similarly, as asset prices rise, including land prices, land goes from 10% of the price of a new house, to 70% of the price of a new house.

The market value of shares, therefore, is not the same as the market value of the real capital of a company. Over the years, even if 70% of profits are taken out as dividends, that leaves 30% that could be accumulated as additional real capital. The company buys additional buildings, machines, materials and so on, all of which sit on its balance sheet. It is the size of the balance sheet that, also, enables the company to buy up the shares of other companies, and to borrow from banks etc., to do so. So, a company whose shares have a market value of £10 million may have a balance sheet of £100 million. The shareholder who bought £3 million of shares, thereby, has control over £100 million of capital.

But, more than that. Company A, with its £100 million of capital, now, uses it as leverage to buy the shares of company B, with a market capitalisation of, say, £6 million. However, in similar fashion, company A need only buy £2 million of company B's shares to obtain a controlling interest. If company B's balance sheet amounts to £60 million, our shareholder, who bought £3 million of shares in A, now, exercises control over £160 million of capital, and so on. This is also a feature of imperialism.

As I have set out, elsewhere, this is also a characteristic of the nature of the global ruling-class of speculators or coupon-clippers as Marx and Engels referred to them, whose objective interests are quite different to, and, indeed, antagonistic to the objective interests of real, large-scale, industrial capital. It is fundamental to the nature of imperialism, today, but, having already digressed to an extent I had not intended, I cannot go into that further, here. I will deal with it in my future book on imperialism.

Back To Part 5

Forward To Part 7

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 5 of 24

I have described, elsewhere, the reasons why that has happened, and its implications. What this indicates, however, is that the market capitalisation of a company's shares is not even directly related to its profits, with any given market rate of interest. Certainly, if a company's profits double, its potential to pay twice as much in dividends rises accordingly, but, whether that potential is realised is another matter. Similarly, the fact that the proportion of profits going to dividends has risen from 10% to 70% shows the opposite is also true, i.e. the profits of a company may not rise, and yet the amount it pays in dividends may do so.

Of itself, that rise in dividends, irrespective of profits, for any given market rate of interest, causes a rise in the capitalised value of the shares. If I have £1 in the bank, paying £0.10 in interest, I have no incentive to buy a £1 share providing the same £0.10 in dividends, particularly given the risk involved in share ownership. But, if the share provides £0.20 of dividends, I do have an incentive to buy the share. Money, moving from bank deposits to bid for a limited number of these existing shares, thereby, pushes up the price of those shares to £2, where the dividend of £0.20, now, again, only represents a yield of 10%.

But, as I have also described, the opposite is also true. If market rates of interest fall, in a secular trend, as they did from around 1982 onwards, the capitalised value of shares, and other assets rises. Then, any given amount of dividends means a lower yield, also, on those shares. If the market rate of interest falls from 10% to 5%, a dividend of £0.10 produces a capitalised value of the share of £2, rather than £1, even though no rise in the company's profits or dividends has occurred. The dividend yield, also, now falls to 5%. However, the shareholders, specifically those with a controlling interest, are unlike other creditors, or asset owners, or people with savings in a bank. The shareholders, because they appoint Directors of the company to look after their interests, can simply increase the level of dividends.

The Directors are themselves, usually, holders of considerable numbers of shares, and so benefit from such decisions, and they often have remuneration packages that include share options, to buy shares at a fixed price, which they can choose to exercise when the share price rises above it. Its true that, if the company profits are used to pay excessive amounts of dividends to share holders, rather than being used to accumulate additional real capital, the company itself will become uncompetitive, and, eventually, fail. However, the Directors of the company are not bothered by that, as against the situation of the actual day to day managers of the company, or even the position of the old private capitalists. Marx notes,

“It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property...

Conceptions which have some meaning on a less developed stage of capitalist production, become quite meaningless here. Success and failure both lead here to a centralisation of capital, and thus to expropriation on the most enormous scale... Since property here exists in the form of stock, its movement and transfer become purely a result of gambling on the stock exchange, where the little fish are swallowed by the sharks and the lambs by the stock-exchange wolves.”

(Capital III, Chapter 27)

Back To Part 4

Forward To Part 6

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 4 of 24

As I have set out elsewhere, and which I cannot go into further, here, however, its necessary to, also, understand the nature of modern imperialism, and of the role of the global ruling-class, in its characteristics and interests, which also reflects the maturity of the contradictions within the modern social-democratic state. The dynamic of imperialist capital, as described by Lenin and Trotsky, is the need to produce on an ever larger scale, and so to continually require ever larger single markets, and states. But, the nature of large-scale, socialised capital, in the form of the corporation, is that control over that capital rests not with its collective owners – the associated producers, i.e. workers and managers – but with a select group of creditors, i.e. the shareholders.

When we examine the takeover of companies, therefore, what we see is not the purchase of the capital of one company by another, but the purchase of a controlling portion of the shares of one company by another. In effect, that is more akin to the behaviour of feudal landowners than the processes of centralisation and concentration of capital described by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and others. There was no objective basis driving one feudal lord to take over the domain of another, in the same way that competition between capitals leads to such concentration and centralisation, to survive.

The reason feudal lord A takes over the domain of B is not that any economies of scale etc., and rise in productivity is obtained, but solely that, in doing so, the total amount of feudal rent and taxes they obtain increases proportionately. In terms of share ownership, if the dividend yield is given, there is similarly no significant economies of scale, or increased productivity for the individual shareholder, whether they own 1,000 shares or 1 million shares. The only benefit, as with the landlord, is that with a yield of 5% the first produces £50 of revenue, and the second £50,000 of revenue. The real advantage, however, comes from the fact that, with a very large shareholding, the shareholder gains control over the real capital of the company. They get to appoint Directors, who act in the interest of those shareholders, and not the interests of the company, and its real capital.

Take the point made earlier in relation to takeovers. If the market value of shares in company A is £10 million, with 10 million shares issued, it is usually only necessary to have control of around 30% of shares to exert control, because the other 70% of shares are in diffused ownership, with many of the small shareholders never bothering to vote. With £3 million, therefore, its possible to have control of a company with a market capitalisation of £10 million. In fact, this market capitalisation is only the current value of its shares, but the company will have assets, real capital, usually, way in excess of that.

The market capitalisation of shares is based on the capitalised value of the revenue of the shares, i.e. the amount of dividend each share produces for its owner. If a share produces £0.10 of dividends, and the market rate of interest is 10%, then the capitalised value of the share is £1, if the rate of interest is only 5%, the value of the share is £2. However, the amount paid as dividends is only a fraction of the actual profits produced by the company. As Haldane noted, in the 1970's, dividends amounted to only 10% of profits, as against 70% today.

Back To Part 3

Forward To Part 5

Anti-Duhring, Part I Philosophy, X – Morals and Law. Equality - Part 3 of 24

In fact, as Lenin and Trotsky noted, there was no evidence that imperialism retarded economic development compared to free competition. On the contrary, as Marx noted in relation to India, even under colonialism, it brought about the first real social revolution, the investment in railways brought further economic development, and, as railways did everywhere, solidified different regions within the nation state. A large part of economic development, in Russia, resulted from the investment there by large-scale foreign capitals, which is one reason that Lenin sought to encourage them to stay, and more to join them after the revolution. The same was true, as Trotsky set out in China.

Lenin goes on,

“Even if we correct this argument and say, as Spectator says, that the trade of the colonies with Britain is now developing more slowly than their trade with other countries, it does not save Kautsky; for it is also monopoly, also imperialism that is beating Great Britain, only it is the monopoly and imperialism of another country (America, Germany).”

(ibid)

Which indicates that, as against the conditions existing under colonialism, what imperialism signifies is that, the role of industrial capital, as against the role of mercantilism, and the former's basis of the production of surplus value, in production, via the export of capital, meant that these competing imperialist states could be played off one against another, as each sought to obtain access to the reserves of labour-power in these developing economies.

Lenin's argument was the same as that used against the Narodniks 25 years earlier, but he could also see what happened in the US, where the large trusts were broken up in the 1890's. As predicted, each smaller component simply now, itself, became a new monopoly. Sometimes, that occurred by the weaker of these companies succumbing, enabling the others to expand, or, also, occurred as each company engaged in vertical integration, taking over its suppliers and customers, as well as the creation of conglomerates. That also includes, in the form of multinational companies, the taking over of capitals in the same sphere, in other countries, which, of itself, creates the requirement for a capitalist state providing and protecting bourgeois property laws, a level playing field for all capital. In other words, the same dynamic that went with the development of capitalism and produced the nation state, now applied on an international scale, and produces the need for the multinational state, as the minimum adequate form, in the era of imperialism.

Looking at the privatisation of the various state monopolies, in Britain, for example, in water, electricity, telecoms, coal, steel, gas, road and rail transport, the consequence was not a return to some mythical golden era of free competition (even with the assistance of specially created bureaucratic quangos responsible for it) and lower prices etc. In each case, the result was that each of these simply ended up being taken over by other monopolies, or more or less disappeared. Coal production, which at one point employed 2 million workers, effectively disappeared. The original reason was that cheaper coal could be imported, but that was supplemented by the “dash for gas”, which saw coal consumption itself fall dramatically.

Some of the water companies were taken over by foreign utilities companies, some by other UK water companies. Some merged with other utilities companies, providing energy etc., such as United Utilities, forming new conglomerates. Steel production was decimated by foreign competition, and where it was maintained it did so only by the British state giving large financial handouts to foreign steel conglomerates such as Tata and Mittal, to take over that production.

Back To Part 2

Forward To Part 4