We saw in the previous
post how bourgeois economists are quite aware of the fact that “value” is not a
“physical property” of the means of production – of what they mistakenly call
“capital” and thus, by so doing, inviting the confusion between the social
relation “capital” and the physical, objective means of production. But then,
once they have acknowledged that economic value – and therefore profit and
therefore interest, which is the average rate of profit – is not a physical
property, bourgeois economists find themselves at a serious loss: because if
one acknowledges that value is not a physical property, then it must follow
that it is a political category based on power relations in a society.
“Capital” therefore can no longer refer to the physical means of production but
rather to the “legal claim over production” that comes from the capitalist’s
“ownership” of the means of production. The insurmountable difficulty for
bourgeois economics with this realization is that capitalism loses its
“natural” status and becomes merely a political reality – a social institution
that is either entered into freely by the members of a society or else is
enforced violently by some (the capitalists) over others (the workers). It is
at this juncture that bourgeois economists balk – because to acknowledge that
capitalism is a political rather than a “natural” reality is immediately to
call its existence into question and its rationale into doubt. That is why
bourgeois economists must perennially oscillate between the notion of “capital”
as physical means of production and
“capital” as exchange value!
Now, on the
assumption of “universally free competition”, we would have to conclude that
capital could simply not exist because universally free exchange would mean
that no “rate of interest”, natural or monetary, could ever apply to capital. For
capital to attract “interest” (read, “profit”) it must be able to be exchanged
with an entity that can increase its “value”: but what can that
“entity” be? Clearly, that entity can only be the living labour of workers who
use the means of production or “capital” made available by their owners, the
“capitalists” or “employers”. But again such an admission is anathema to
bourgeois economists because that would be tantamount to admitting that there
is no “exchange” possible between “capital” as a “thing” and living labour as
the living activity of workers. Therefore, bourgeois economists are thrown back
to finding a “property” of capital that makes such an “exchange” politically
justifiable.
On the assumption
of “universally free competition”, the only ways in which one individual, the
capitalist or “employer”, is able “to purchase” or “exchange” existing products
or “goods” for the living activity of another individual, the worker or “employee”,
are two: - either the capitalist already owns the means of production and
is therefore able to force the worker
to sell his living activity; or else the
capitalist renounces his present consumption and exchanges it for the living
labour of workers who wish to consume his goods immediately. Of course, in
neither case is the capitalist system of production justified, because in the
first case, where capitalists already own the means of production, their prior
ownership is not explained or justified, and in the other case, where they
purchase the living activity of workers by “delaying” or “sacrificing” their
present consumption, that may justify the current “exchange” by workers to
capitalists, but it certainly does not justify the enslavement of all future
generations of workers to capital!
But in this second
instance, the rationale for capitalism is that the capitalist is the stronger
person, the ascetic who is willing to wait, to deprive himself, to sacrifice
present consumption in exchange for the living labour of those who cannot wait
– and who therefore become “employees” or workers. (No less a thinker than
Joseph Schumpeter espoused this patently flawed rationale.) This capitalist
claim to “property” is called “time preference” in bourgeois economics. Thus,
bourgeois economists are able to mix the subjective (time preference) with the
objective (the contribution of the means of production to the product): there
is almost a Freudian “transference” of capability from the clearly political
ownership of the means of production to the “metaphysical” or “physiological”
contribution of the means of production to the creation of the product itself!
Here is Marx on this
precise point and this precious equivocation on the part of bourgeois
economists to justify the violence of the wage relation well before the
Marginal Revolution came to pass in economic theory:
Altri, anch’essi economisti, come per
esempio Ricardo44, Sismondi45 ecc., dicono che soltanto il lavoro e non il
capitale, è produttivo. Ma in tal modo costoro lasciano sussistere il capitale
non nella sua specifica determinatezza formale, ossia come rapporto di
produzione riflesso in sé, ma pensano soltanto alla sua sostanza materiale,
alla materia prima ecc. Ma non sono questi elementi materiali che fanno del
capitale il capitale. D’altra parte poi essi si accorgono che il capitale per
un suo verso è valore, quindi qualcosa di immateriale, di indifferente alla sua
sostanza materiale46. E allora Say afferma: «il capitale è sempre di natura
immateriale, giacché non è la materia che costituisce il capitale, ma il valore
di questa materia, valore che non ha nulla di corporeo» (Say, 21)47. Oppure
Sismondi: «Il capitale è un’idea commerciale» (Sismondi, LX)48. Ma a questo
punto si accorgono che il capitale è anche una determinazione economica diversa
da quella di valore, perché altrimenti non sarebbe nemmeno possibile parlare di
capitale a differenza del valore, dato che, se tutti i capitali sono valori,
non tutti i valori in quanto tali sono capitale. E allora si rifugiano di nuovo
nella forma materiale che esso assume entro il processo di produzione, come fa
per esempio Ricardo quando definisce il capitale come «lavoro accumulato
impiegato per la produzione di nuovo lavoro»49 ossia come mero strumento o
materiale di lavoro. In questo senso Say50 parla addirittura di «servizio
produttivo del capitale» su cui si baserebbe la sua remunerazione: come se lo
strumento di lavoro in quanto tale pretendesse il ringraziamento dell’operaio,
e come se non fosse invece proprio in virtù di quest’ultimo che esso è posto
come strumento di lavoro produttivo. In tal modo l’autonomia dello strumento di
lavoro — che è una sua determinazione sociale, vale a dire la sua
determinazione di capitale — viene presupposta per dedurne i diritti del
capitale. (Grundrisse, 3.2.12)
The point here is that bourgeois
economists must present capital as the most “natural” of values. And to do so
they have to try and fuse two aspects of capital – that of being a social
relation whereby the capitalist is able “to purchase” human living activity as
“labour power”, and that of being “embodied” in physical commodities or “goods”
– means of production and products that can be “exchanged” with human living labour
as it the latter itself were a “good” or commodity exchangeable like an object.
Thus, capital becomes “objectified or dead labour”. Wicksell’s notion of “the
natural rate of interest” widely adopted in bourgeois economics is nothing
other than the most nefarious, wicked and brutal apology for the bestiality of
capitalist oppression.
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