The Accumulation Of Capital Part 37

Opponents of militarism frequently appeal to this point of view to show that military supplies as an economic investment for capital merely put profit taken from one capitalist into the pocket of another.[422] On the other hand, capital and its advocates try to overpersuade the working cla.s.s to this point of view by talking them into the belief that indirect taxes and the demand of the state would only bring about a change in the material form of reproduction; instead of other commodities cruisers and guns would be produced which would give the workers as good a living, if not a better one.

One glance at the diagram shows how little truth there is in this argument as far as the workers are concerned. To make comparison easier, we will suppose the armament factories to employ just as many workers as were employed before in the production of means of subsistence for the working cla.s.s. 1,285 units will then be paid out as wages, but now they will only buy 1,185's worth of means of subsistence.

All this looks different from the perspective of capital as a whole. For this the 100 at the disposal of the state, which represent the demand for armaments, const.i.tute a new market. Originally this money was variable capital and as such it has done its job, it has been exchanged for living labour which produced the surplus value. But then the circulation of the variable capital was stopped short, this money was split off, and it now appears as a new purchasing power in the possession of the state. It has been created by sleight of hand, as it were, but still it has the same effects as a newly opened market. Of course for the time being capital is debarred from selling 100 units of consumer goods for the working cla.s.s, and the individual capitalist considers the worker just as good a consumer and buyer of commodities as anyone else, another capitalist, the state, the peasant, foreign countries, etc. But let us not forget that for capital as a whole the upkeep of the working cla.s.s is only a necessary evil, only a means towards the real end of production: the creation and realisation of surplus value. If it were possible to extort surplus value without giving labour an equal measure of means of subsistence, it would be all the better for business. To begin with indirect taxation has the same effects as if--the price of foodstuffs remaining constant--the capitalists had succeeded in depressing wages by a hundred units without detracting from the work performed, seeing that a lower output of consumer goods is equally the inevitable result of continuous wage cuts.

If wages are cut heavily, capital does not worry about having to produce fewer means of subsistence for the workers, in fact it delights in this practice at every opportunity; similarly, capital as a whole does not mind if the effective demand of the working cla.s.s for means of subsistence is curtailed because of indirect taxation which is not compensated by a rise in wages. This may seem strange because in the latter case the balance of the variable capital goes to the exchequer, while with a direct wage cut it remains in the capitalists' pockets and--commodity prices remaining equal--increases the relative surplus value. But a continuous and universal reduction of money wages can only be carried through on rare occasions, especially if trade union organisation is highly developed. There are strong social and political barriers to this fond aspiration of capital. Depression of the real wage by means of indirect taxation, on the other hand, can be carried through promptly, smoothly and universally, and it usually takes time for protests to be heard; and besides, the opposition is confined to the political field and has no immediate economic repercussions. The subsequent restriction in the production of means of subsistence does not represent a loss of markets for capital as a whole but rather a saving in the costs of producing surplus value. Surplus value is never realised by producing means of subsistence for the workers--however necessary this may be, as the reproduction of living labour, for the production of surplus value.

But to come back to our example:

I. _5,000c + 1,000v + 1,000s = 7,000_ means of production II. _1,430c + 285v + 285s = 2,000_ means of subsistence

At first it looks as if Department II were also creating and realising surplus value in the process of producing means of subsistence for the workers, and Department I by producing the requisite means of production. But if we take the social product as a whole, the illusion disappears. The equation is in that case:

_6,430c + 1,285v + 1,285s = 9,000_

Now, if the means of subsistence for the workers are cut by 100 units, the corresponding contraction of both departments will give us the following equations:

I. _4,949c + 98975v + 98975s = 6,9285_ II. _1,3585c + 27075v + 27075s = 1,900_

and for the social product as a whole:

_6,3075c + 1,2605v + 1,2605s = 8,8285_

This looks like a general decrease in both the total volume of production and in the production of surplus value--but only if we contemplate just the abstract quant.i.ties of value in the composition of the total product; it does not hold good for the material composition thereof. Looking closer, we find that nothing but the upkeep of labour is in effect decreased. Fewer means of subsistence and production are now being made, no doubt, but then, they had had no other function save to maintain workers. The social product is smaller and less capital is now employed--but then, the object of capitalist production is not simply to employ as much capital as possible, but to produce as much surplus value as possible. Capital has only decreased because a smaller amount is sufficient for maintaining the workers. If the total cost of maintaining the workers employed in the society came to 1,285 units in the first instance, the present decrease of the social product by 1715--the difference of (9,000-8,8285)--comes off this maintenance charge, and there is a consequent change in the composition of the social product:

_6,430c + 1,1135v + 1,285s = 8,8285_

Constant capital and surplus value remain unchanged, and only the variable capital, paid labour, has diminished. Or--in case there are doubts about constant capital being unaffected--we may further allow for the event that, as would happen in actual practice, concomitant with the decrease in means of subsistence for the workers there will be a corresponding cut in the constant capital. The equation for the social product as a whole would then be:

_6,3075c + 1,236v + 1,285s = 8,8285_

In spite of the smaller social product, there is no change in the surplus value in either case, and it is only the cost of maintaining the workers that has fallen.

Put it this way: the value of the aggregate social product may be defined as consisting of three parts, the total constant capital of the society, its total variable capital, and its total surplus value, of which the first set of products contains no additional labour, and the second and third no means of production. As regards their material form, all these products come into being in the given period of production--though in point of value the constant capital had been produced in a previous period and is merely being transferred to new products. On this basis, we can also divide all the workers employed into three mutually exclusive categories: those who produce the aggregate constant capital of the society, those who provide the upkeep for all the workers, and finally those who create the entire surplus value for the capitalist cla.s.s.

If, then, the workers' consumption is curtailed, only workers in the second category will lose their jobs. _Ex hypothesi_, these workers had never created surplus value for capital, and in consequence their dismissal is therefore no loss from the capitalist's point of view but a gain, since it decreases the cost of producing surplus value.

The demand of the state which arises at the same time has the lure of a new and attractive sphere for realising the surplus value. Some of the money circulating as variable capital breaks free of this cycle and in the state treasury it represents a new demand. For the technique of taxation, of course, the order of events is rather different, since the amount of the indirect taxes is actually advanced to the state by capital and is merely being refunded to the capitalists by the sale of their commodities, as part of their price. But economically speaking, it makes no difference. The crucial point is that the quant.i.ty of money with the function of variable capital should first mediate the exchange between capital and labour power. Later, when there is an exchange between workers and capitalists as buyers and sellers of commodities respectively, this money will change hands and accrue to the state as taxes. This money, which capital has set circulating, first fulfils its primary function in the exchange with labour power, but subsequently, by mediation of the state, it begins an entirely new career. As a new purchasing power, belonging with neither labour nor capital, it becomes interested in new products, in a special branch of production which does not cater for either the capitalists or the working cla.s.s, and thus it offers capital new opportunities for creating and realising surplus value. When we were formerly taking it for granted that the indirect taxes extorted from the workers are used for paying the officials and for provisioning the army, we found the 'saving' in the consumption of the working cla.s.s to mean that the workers rather than the capitalists were made to pay for the personal consumption of the hangers-on of the capitalist cla.s.s and the tools of their cla.s.s-rule. This charge devolved from the surplus value to the variable capital, and a corresponding amount of the surplus value became available for purposes of capitalisation. Now we see how the taxes extorted from the workers afford capital a new opportunity for acc.u.mulation when they are used for armament manufacture.

On the basis of indirect taxation, militarism in practice works both ways. By lowering the normal standard of living for the working cla.s.s, it ensures both that capital should be able to maintain a regular army, the organ of capitalist rule, and that it may tap an impressive field for further acc.u.mulation.[423]

We have still to examine the second source of the state's purchasing power referred to in our example, the 150 units out of the total 250 invested in armaments. They differ essentially from the hundred units considered above in that they are not supplied by the workers but by the petty bourgeoisie, i.e. the artisans and peasants. (In this connection, we can ignore the comparatively small tax-contribution of the capitalist cla.s.s itself.)

The money accruing to the state as taxes from the peasant ma.s.ses--as our generic term for all non-proletarian consumers--was not originally advanced by capital and has not split off from capital in circulation.

In the hand of the peasant it is the equivalent of goods that have been realised, the exchange value of simple commodity production. The state now gets part of the purchasing power of the non-capitalist consumers, purchasing power, that is to say, which is already free to realise the surplus value for capitalist acc.u.mulation. Now the question arises, whether economic changes will result for capital, and if so, of what nature, from diverting the purchasing power of such strata to the state for militarist purposes. It almost looks as if we had come up against yet another s.h.i.+ft in the material form of reproduction. Capital will now produce an equivalent of war materials for the state instead of producing large quant.i.ties of means of production and subsistence for peasant consumers. But in fact the changes go deeper. First and foremost, the state can use the mechanism of taxation to mobilise much larger amounts of purchasing power from the non-capitalist consumers than they would ordinarily spend on their own consumption.

Indeed the modern system of taxation itself is largely responsible for forcing commodity economy on the peasants. Under pressure of taxes, the peasant must turn more and more of his produce into commodities, and at the same time he must buy more and more. Taxation presses the produce of peasant economy into circulation and compels the peasants to become buyers of capitalist products. Finally, on a basis of commodity production in the peasant style, the system of taxation lures more purchasing power from peasant economy than would otherwise become active.

What would normally have been h.o.a.rded by the peasants and the lower middle cla.s.ses until it has grown big enough to invest in savings banks and other banks is now set free to const.i.tute an effective demand and an opportunity for investment. Further the mult.i.tude of individual and insignificant demands for a whole range of commodities, which will become effective at different times and which might often be met just as well by simple commodity production, is now replaced by a comprehensive and h.o.m.ogeneous demand of the state. And the satisfaction of this demand presupposes a big industry of the highest order. It requires the most favourable conditions for the production of surplus value and for acc.u.mulation. In the form of government contracts for army supplies the scattered purchasing power of the consumers is concentrated in large quant.i.ties and, free of the vagaries and subjective fluctuations of personal consumption, it achieves an almost automatic regularity and rhythmic growth. Capital itself ultimately controls this automatic and rhythmic movement of militarist production through the legislature and a press whose function is to mould so-called 'public opinion'. That is why this particular province of capitalist acc.u.mulation at first seems capable of infinite expansion. All other attempts to expand markets and set up operational bases for capital largely depend on historical, social and political factors beyond the control of capital, whereas production for militarism represents a province whose regular and progressive expansion seems primarily determined by capital itself.

In this way capital turns historical necessity into a virtue: the ever fiercer compet.i.tion in the capitalist world itself provides a field for acc.u.mulation of the first magnitude. Capital increasingly employs militarism for implementing a foreign and colonial policy to get hold of the means of production and labour power of non-capitalist countries and societies. This same militarism works in a like manner in the capitalist countries to divert purchasing power away from the non-capitalist strata. The representatives of simple commodity production and the working cla.s.s are affected alike in this way. At their expense, the acc.u.mulation of capital is raised to the highest power, by robbing the one of their productive forces and by depressing the other's standard of living. Needless to say, after a certain stage the conditions for the acc.u.mulation of capital both at home and abroad turn into their very opposite--they become conditions for the decline of capitalism.

The more ruthlessly capital sets about the destruction of non-capitalist strata at home and in the outside world, the more it lowers the standard of living for the workers as a whole, the greater also is the change in the day-to-day history of capital. It becomes a string of political and social disasters and convulsions, and under these conditions, punctuated by periodical economic catastrophes or crises, acc.u.mulation can go on no longer.

But even before this natural economic impa.s.se of capital's own creating is properly reached it becomes a necessity for the international working cla.s.s to revolt against the rule of capital.

Capitalism is the first mode of economy with the weapon of propaganda, a mode which tends to engulf the entire globe and to stamp out all other economies, tolerating no rival at its side. Yet at the same time it is also the first mode of economy which is unable to exist by itself, which needs other economic systems as a medium and soil. Although it strives to become universal, and, indeed, on account of this its tendency, it must break down--because it is immanently incapable of becoming a universal form of production. In its living history it is a contradiction in itself, and its movement of acc.u.mulation provides a solution to the conflict and aggravates it at the same time. At a certain stage of development there will be no other way out than the application of socialist principles. The aim of socialism is not acc.u.mulation but the satisfaction of toiling humanity's wants by developing the productive forces of the entire globe. And so we find that socialism is by its very nature an harmonious and universal system of economy.

FOOTNOTES:

[420] Dr. Renner indeed makes this a.s.sumption the basis of his treatise on taxation. 'Every particle of value created in the course of one year is made up of these four parts: profit, interest, rent, and wages; and annual taxation, then, can only be levied upon these' (_Das arbeitende Volk und die Steuern_, Vienna, 1909). Though Renner immediately goes on to mention peasants, he cursorily dismisses them in a single sentence: 'A peasant e.g. is simultaneously entrepreneur, worker, and landowner, his agricultural proceeds yield him wage, profit, and rent, _all in one_.' Obviously, it is an empty abstraction to apply simultaneously all the categories of capitalist production to the peasantry, to conceive of the peasant as entrepreneur, wage labourer and landlord all in one person. If, like Renner, we want to put the peasant into a single category, his peculiarity for economics lies in the very fact that he belongs neither to the cla.s.s of capitalist entrepreneurs nor to that of the wage proletariat, that he is not a representative of capitalism at all but of simple commodity production.

[421] It would go beyond the scope of the present treatise to deal with cartels and trusts as specific phenomena of the imperialist phase. They are due to the internal compet.i.tive struggle between individual capitalist groups for a monopoly of the existing spheres for acc.u.mulation and for the distribution of profits.

[422] In a reply to Vorontsov, Professor Manuilov, for example, wrote what was then greatly praised by the Russian Marxists: 'In this context, we must distinguish strictly between a group of entrepreneurs producing weapons of war and the capitalist cla.s.s as a whole. For the manufacturers of guns, rifles and other war materials, the existence of militarism is no doubt profitable and indispensable. It is indeed quite possible that the abolition of the system of armed peace would spell ruin for Krupp. The point at issue, however, is not a special group of entrepreneurs but the capitalists as a cla.s.s, capitalist production as a whole.' In this connection, however, it should be noted that 'if the burden of taxation falls chiefly on the working population, every increase of this burden diminishes the purchasing power of the population and hence the demand for commodities'. This fact is taken as proof that militarism, under the aspect of armament production, does indeed 'enrich one group of capitalists, but at the same time it injures all others, spelling gain on the one hand but loss on the other'

(_Vesnik Prava_, Journal of the Law Society (St. Petersburg, 1890), no.

1, 'Militarism and Capitalism').

[423] Ultimately, the deterioration of the normal conditions under which labour power is renewed will bring about a deterioration of labour itself, it will diminish the average efficiency and productivity of labour, and thus jeopardise the conditions for the production of surplus value. But capital will not feel these results for a long time, and so they do not immediately enter into its economic calculations, except in so far as they bring about more drastic defensive measures of the wage labourers in general.