Resource Material on Political Economy
http://cpcml.ca/Tmlw2012/W42026.HTM
The Battle for Working Class Thinking
and a Way Forward
TML Weekly Information Project is publishing research material to assist readers in training their thinking to see beyond the surface sheen of monopoly capitalism. Karl Marx had the uncommon habit of never making a definitive statement about a social phenomenon unless he engaged in individual acts of conscious participation to find its root or essence. He remarked with his usual insight, “All science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided.”
His exposure of vulgar economy taught the working class to be scientific and thorough in all its endeavours and to be true to its own thinking and not be swayed by the pompous types who pose as experts but in fact are well paid propagandists of owners of capital waging campaigns against the working class.
Vulgar economy presents an obvious description of the relations of production as a substitution for an analysis of capitalism and its problems, natural laws and contradictions. For example, it states that owners of capital pay wages to workers for their work therefore; workers must be a cost of production. Money is made in the financial sector far removed from any production process therefore; financial or banking capital must be separate from industrial capital and the “real economy”; Bay Street is far from Main Street; money can really be made from nothing and the resulting profit consumed without workers producing it. These facile assertions of prima facie contradictions of capitalism, which of course are accepted holus-bolus as common sense by capital-centred politicians and monopoly-controlled mass media, lead us away from science and into distortions that block our understanding of the essence of monopoly capitalism and how to change it. Importantly, they drive a wedge between well-meaning politicians and the leading social force for change, the working class and its program to open a path forward to a pro-social alternative.
In these excerpts, Marx exposes vulgar economists as dupes of the “enchanted and perverted world” of capitalism. The fact that the social product produced by the working class under capitalism must first be transformed into exchange-value and money before it can be put to use begins a process of circulation that takes the social product and its monetary representation further and further away from its source until the distance is so great vulgar economists cannot even imagine where the value originated. They see the circulation of money and cannot see beyond to its essential connection with workers producing social product. They conjure up owners of capital as mythical beings able to make wealth appear without workers producing anything. And then when it all collapses in economic crises, the vulgar economists shrug their shoulders, beat their breasts and swear the causes are unknowable yet they are somehow sure of what has to be done and that is to save not the actual producers, the working class and its means of production, but the real heroes of the economy, the most powerful owners of capital who can make wealth from nothing or at least from moving value from place to place with their famous battle cry — “buy low sell high!” or by “closing a plant here and opening a plant there.” The call goes out that the only thing to do is give public funds to bail out those monopolies that are “too big to fail” and wreck those that are “not too big to fail” or those that at least do not have the proper social connections, and importantly, demand and extort concessions from the working class because after all they are “costs of production” that must be lowered if we are ever to recover. And while the vulgar economists are leading the theoretical charge on wrecking manufacturing and extorting concessions from workers they cry out to go hog wild and wreck society as well by degrading social programs and public services because after all they are a burden on the economy. When social programs and public services are slashed, the public debts and deficits owed to many of those same owners of capital who are “too big to fail” and were bailed out with public funds will be reduced and then, we are told, recovery may occur even before another economic crisis happens if we are lucky, although they whisper to save face, “We might have a double-dip.”
This is all “common sense” to the anti-social vulgar economist and politician. The working class has learned that neoliberals are fond of wrapping themselves in a blanket of common sense that abhors any scientific understanding of social phenomena. Former Ontario Premier Mike Harris even had his neoliberal “common sense revolution” and variations exist from Ontario’s McGuinty, Ford of Toronto, Charest in Quebec, Redford in Alberta, Clark in BC and of course the man who has given the modern crusade against science a deeply religious dimension, Mr. Stephen Harper. In their own way, the vulgar politicians block the working class from solving social, economic and political problems and moving society forward to a pro-social alternative.
On the crisis in the auto sector and with an eye on this year’s CAW negotiations for new contracts with the “Detroit Big Three,” Jeremy Cato, resident Globe and Mail economic expert on the auto sector recently wrote, “Any solution or package of solutions must address the fundamental issue on the minds of car company executives who decide where to invest in auto manufacturing: cost.”
Of course for Mr. Cato and all of Canada’s vulgar economists, those “costs” on the minds of the great saviours and captains of global industry are the wages, benefits and pensions of the autoworkers who contrary to the ravings of Cato are the actual producers of the value that he, his fellow capital-centred colleagues and car company executives require if they are going to continue to live their lives as pampered members of the official intelligentsia and ruling class. But they are short-sighted and blinded by their “common sense” and believe that workers are not capable of gaining an understanding of what has to be done in the auto and other sectors. The vulgar economists and politicians are blind to the reality that the modern working class has the interest, desire and ability to gain an understanding of what to do through conscious participation in acts of finding out. And with conscious participation in acts of finding out, they will cut through the surface glitter and “common sense” and grasp the essence of how to break new ground in their struggle for a pro-social alternative because the working class when it sticks to its own thinking and program is the architect and builder of the new.
Karl Marx on Vulgar Economy
(Note: In these selections from Capital, Karl Marx analyses English capitalism of the nineteenth century where unlike today the landed aristocracy based on its historical ownership of land still claimed a significant portion of social product as rent.)
Vulgar economy actually does no more than interpret, systematise and defend in doctrinaire fashion the conceptions of the agents of bourgeois production who are entrapped in bourgeois production relations. It should not astonish us, then, that vulgar economy feels particularly at home in the estranged outward appearances of economic relations in which these prima facie absurd and perfect contradictions appear and that these relations seem the more self-evident the more their internal relationships are concealed from it, although they are understandable to the popular mind. But all science would be superfluous if the outward appearance and the essence of things directly coincided. Thus, vulgar economy has not the slightest suspicion that the trinity which it takes as its point of departure, namely, land—rent, capital—interest, labour—wages or the price of labour, are prima facie three impossible combinations.
First, we have the use-value land, which has no value, and the exchange-value rent: so that a social relation conceived as a thing is made proportional to Nature, i.e., two incommensurable magnitudes are supposed to stand in a given ratio to one another.
Then capital—interest. If capital is conceived as a certain sum of values represented independently by money, then it is prima facie nonsense to say that a certain value should be worth more than it is worth. It is precisely in the form: capital—interest that all intermediate links are eliminated, and capital is reduced to its most general formula, which therefore in itself is also inexplicable and absurd. The vulgar economist prefers the formula capital—interest, with its occult quality of making a value unequal to itself, to the formula capital—profit, precisely for the reason that this already more nearly approaches actual capitalist relations. Then again, driven by the disturbing thought that 4 is not 5 and that 100 taler cannot possibly be 110 taler, he flees from capital as value to the material substance of capital; to its use-value as a condition of production of labour, to machinery, raw materials, etc. Thus, he is able once more to substitute in place of the first incomprehensible relation, whereby 4 = 5, a wholly incommensurable one between a use-value, a thing on one side, and a definite social production relation, surplus-value, on the other, as in the case of landed property. As soon as the vulgar economist arrives at this incommensurable relation, everything becomes clear to him, and he no longer feels the need for further thought. For he has arrived precisely at the “rational” in bourgeois conception.
Finally, labour—wages, or price of labour, is an expression, as shown in Book I, which prima facie contradicts the conception of value as well as of price — the latter generally being but a definite expression of value. And “price of labour” is just as irrational as a yellow logarithm. But here the vulgar economist is all the more satisfied, because he has gained the profound insight of the bourgeois, namely, that he pays money for labour, and since precisely the contradiction between the formula and the conception of value relieves him from all obligation to understand the latter.
Marx on Socialized Humanity
The capitalist process of production is a historically determined form of the social process of production in general. The latter is as much a production process of material conditions of human life as a process taking place under specific historical and economic production relations, producing and reproducing these production relations themselves, and thereby also the bearers of this process, their material conditions of existence and their mutual relations, i.e., their particular socio-economic form. For the aggregate of these relations, in which the agents of this production stand with respect to Nature and to one another, and in which they produce, is precisely society, considered from the standpoint of its economic structure. Like all its predecessors, the capitalist process of production proceeds under definite material conditions, which are, however, simultaneously the bearers of definite social relations entered into by individuals in the process of reproducing their life. Those conditions, like these relations, are on the one hand prerequisites, on the other hand results and creations of the capitalist process of production; they are produced and reproduced by it. Capital (and the capitalist is merely capital personified and functions in the process of production solely as the agent of capital) in its corresponding social process of production, pumps a definite quantity of surplus-labour out of the direct producers, or labourers; capital obtains this surplus-labour without an equivalent, and in essence it always remains forced labour — no matter how much it may seem to result from free contractual agreement. This surplus-labour appears as surplus-value, and this surplus-value exists as a surplus-product. Surplus-labour in general, as labour performed over and above the given requirements, must always remain. In the capitalist as well as in the slave system, etc., it merely assumes an antagonistic form and is supplemented by complete idleness of a stratum of society. A definite quantity of surplus-labour is required as insurance against accidents, and by the necessary and progressive expansion of the process of reproduction in keeping with the development of the needs and the growth of population, which is called accumulation from the viewpoint of the capitalist. It is one of the civilising aspects of capital that it enforces this surplus-labour in a manner and under conditions which are more advantageous to the development of the productive forces, social relations, and the creation of the elements for a new and higher form than under the preceding forms of slavery, serfdom, etc. Thus it gives rise to a stage, on the one hand, in which coercion and monopolisation of social development (including its material and intellectual advantages) by one portion of society at the expense of the other are eliminated; on the other hand, it creates the material means and embryonic conditions, making it possible in a higher form of society to combine this surplus-labour with a greater reduction of time devoted to material labour in general. For, depending on the development of labour productivity, surplus-labour may be large in a small total working-day, and relatively small in a large total working-day. If the necessary labour-time = 3 and the surplus-labour = 3, then the total working-day = 6 and the rate of surplus-labour = 100%. If the necessary labour = 9 and the surplus-labour = 3, then the total working-day = 12 and the rate of surplus-labour only = 33 1/3%. In that case, it depends upon the labour productivity how much use-value shall be produced in a definite time, hence also in a definite surplus labour-time. The actual wealth of society and the possibility of constantly expanding its reproduction process, therefore, do not depend upon the duration of surplus-labour, but upon its productivity and the more or less copious conditions of production under which it is performed. In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development, this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production that satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.
Marx on the Division of the Social Product Produced by the Working Class During the 19th Century
(Note: In the colonies such as Canada and with the transformation to monopoly capitalism at the end of the 19th century and the explosive growth of government controlled by owners of capital as representative of society — especially its military, police forces, governing bureaucracy and infrastructure including public funds and other assets made available to owners of capital — the landlord class has lost its standing. The main claimants on the social product produced by the working class have now become — the working class, governments and owners of capital.)
In a capitalist society, this surplus-value, or this surplus-product (leaving aside chance fluctuations in its distribution and considering only its regulating law, its standardising limits), is divided among capitalists as dividends proportionate to the share of the social capital each holds. In this form, surplus-value appears as average profit, which falls to the share of capital, an average profit which in turn divides into profit of enterprise and interest, and which under these two categories may fall into the laps of different kinds of capitalists. This appropriation and distribution of surplus-value, or surplus-product, on the part of capital, however, has its barrier in landed property. Just as the operating capitalist pumps surplus-labour, and thereby surplus-value and surplus-product in the form of profit, out of the labourer, so the landlord in turn pumps a portion of this surplus-value, or surplus-product, out of the capitalist in the form of rent in accordance with the laws already elaborated.
Hence, when speaking here of profit as that portion of surplus-value falling to the share of capital, we mean average profit (equal to profit of enterprise plus interest) which is already limited by the deduction of rent from the aggregate profit (identical in mass with aggregate surplus-value); the deduction of rent is assumed. Profit of capital (profit of enterprise plus interest) and ground-rent are thus no more than particular components of surplus-value, categories by which surplus-value is differentiated depending on whether it falls to the share of capital or landed property, headings that in no whit however alter its nature. Added together, these form the sum of social surplus- value. Capital pumps the surplus-labour, which is represented by surplus-value and surplus-product, directly out of the labourers. Thus, in this sense, it may be regarded as the producer of surplus-value. Landed property has nothing to do with the actual process of production. Its role is confined to transferring a portion of the produced surplus-value from the pockets of capital to its own. However, the landlord plays a role in the capitalist process of production not merely through the pressure he exerts upon capital, nor merely because large landed property is a prerequisite and condition of capitalist production since it is a prerequisite and condition of the expropriation of the labourer from the means of production, but particularly because he appears as the personification of one of the most essential conditions of production.
Finally, the labourer in the capacity of owner and seller of his individual labour-power receives a portion of the product under the label of wages, in which that portion of his labour appears which we call necessary labour, i.e., that required for the maintenance and reproduction of this labour-power, be the conditions of this maintenance and reproduction scanty or bountiful, favourable or unfavourable.
Whatever may be the disparity of these relations in other respects, they all have this in common: Capital yields a profit year after year to the capitalist, land a ground-rent to the landlord, and labour-power, under normal conditions and so long as it remains useful labour-power, a wage to the labourer. These three portions of total value annually produced, and the corresponding portions of the annually created total product (leaving aside for the present any consideration of accumulation), may be annually consumed by their respective owners, without exhausting the source of their reproduction. They are like the annually consumable fruits of a perennial tree, or rather three trees; they form the annual incomes of three classes, capitalist, landowner and labourer, revenues distributed by the functioning capitalist in his capacity as direct extorter of surplus-labour and employer of labour in general. Thus, capital appears to the capitalist, land to the landlord, and labour-power, or rather labour itself, to the labourer (since he actually sells labour-power only as it is manifested, and since the price of labour-power, as previously shown, inevitably appears as the price of labour under the capitalist mode of production), as three different sources of their specific revenues, namely, profit, ground-rent and wages. They are really so in the sense that capital is a perennial pumping-machine of surplus-labour for the capitalist, land a perennial magnet for the landlord, attracting a portion of the surplus-value pumped out by capital, and finally, labour the constantly self-renewing condition and ever self-renewing means of acquiring under the title of wages a portion of the value created by the labourer and thus a part of the social product measured by this portion of value, i.e., the necessities of life. They are so, furthermore, in the sense that capital fixes a portion of the value and thereby of the product of the annual labour in the form of profit; landed property fixes another portion in the form of rent; and wage-labour fixes a third portion in the form of wages, and precisely by this transformation converts them into revenues of the capitalist, landowner, and labourer, without, however, creating the substance itself which is transformed into these various categories. The distribution rather presupposes the existence of this substance, namely, the total value of the annual product, which is nothing but materialised social labour. Nevertheless, it is not in this form that the matter appears to the agents of production, the bearers of the various functions in the production process, but rather in a distorted form. Why this takes place will be developed in the further course of our analysis. Capital, landed property and labour appear to those agents of production as three different, independent sources, from which as such there arise three different components of the annually produced value — and thereby the product in which it exists; thus, from which there arise not merely the different forms of this value as revenues falling to the share of particular factors in the social process of production, but from which this value itself arises, and thereby the substance of these forms of revenue. [Here one folio sheet of the manuscript is missing. — Engels]
The Enchanted and Perverted World of Capitalism and Vulgar Economics in Which Capital Becomes the Productive Force and
Labour A Cost of Production
It is clear that capital presupposes labour as wage-labour. But it is just as clear that if labour as wage-labour is taken as the point of departure, so that the identity of labour in general with wage-labour appears to be self-evident, then capital and monopolised land must also appear as the natural form of the conditions of labour in relation to labour in general. To be capital, then, appears as the natural form of the means of labour and thereby as the purely real character arising from their function in the labour-process in general. Capital and produced means of production thus become identical terms. Similarly, land and land monopolised through private ownership become identical. The means of labour as such, which are by nature capital, thus become the source of profit, much as the land as such becomes the source of rent.
Labour as such, in its simple capacity as purposive productive activity, relates to the means of production, not in their social determinate form, but rather in their concrete substance, as material and means of labour; the latter likewise are distinguished from one another merely materially, as use-values, i.e., the land as unproduced, the others as produced, means of labour. If, then, labour coincides with wage-labour, so does the particular social form in which the conditions of labour confront labour coincide with their material existence. The means of labour as such are then capital, and the land as such is landed property. The formal independence of these conditions of labour in relation to labour, the unique form of this independence with respect to wage-labour, is then a property inseparable from them as things, as material conditions of production, an inherent, immanent, intrinsic character of them as elements of production. Their definite social character in the process of capitalist production bearing the stamp of a definite historical epoch is a natural and intrinsic substantive character belonging to them, as it were, from time immemorial, as elements of the production process. Therefore, the respective part played by the earth as the original field of activity of labour, as the realm of forces of Nature, as the pre-existing arsenal of all objects of labour, and the other respective part played by the produced means of production (instruments, raw materials, etc.) in the general process of production, must seem to be expressed in the respective shares claimed by them as capital and landed property, i.e., which fall to the share of their social representatives in the form of profit (interest) and rent, like to the labourer — the part his labour plays in the process of production is expressed in wages. Rent, profit and wages thus seem to grow out of the role played by the land, produced means of production, and labour in the simple labour-process, even when we consider this labour-process as one carried on merely between man and Nature, leaving aside any historical determination. It is merely the same thing again, in another form, when it is argued: the product in which a wage-labourer’s labour for himself is manifested, his proceeds or revenue, is simply wages, the portion of value (and thereby the social product measured by this value) which his wages represent. Thus, if wage-labour coincides with labour generally, then so do wages with the produce of labour, and the value portion representing wages with the value created by labour generally. But in this way the other portions of value, profit and rent also appear independent with respect to wages, and must arise from sources of their own, which are specifically different and independent of labour; they must arise from the participating elements of production, to the share of whose owners they fall; i.e., profit arises from the means of production, the material elements of capital, and rent arises from the land, or Nature, as represented by the landlord.
Landed property, capital and wage-labour are thus transformed from sources of revenue — in the sense that capital attracts to the capitalist, in the form of profit, a portion of the surplus-value extracted by him from labour, that monopoly in land attracts for the landlord another portion in the form of rent; and that labour grants the labourer the remaining portion of value in the form of wages — from sources by means of which one portion of value is transformed into the form of profit, another into the form of rent, and a third into the form of wages — into actual sources from which these value portions and respective portions of the product in which they exist, or for which they are exchangeable, arise themselves, and from which, therefore, in the final analysis, the value of the product itself arises. (“Wages, profit, and rent are the three original sources of all revenue, as well as of all exchangeable value.” Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.)
In the case of the simplest categories of the capitalist mode of production, and even of commodity-production, in the case of commodities and money, we have already pointed out the mystifying character that transforms the social relations, for which the material elements of wealth serve as bearers in production, into properties of these things themselves (commodities) and still more pronouncedly transforms the production relation itself into a thing (money). All forms of society, in so far as they reach the stage of commodity- production and money circulation, take part in this perversion. But under the capitalist mode of production and in the case of capital, which forms its dominant category, its determining production relation, this enchanted and perverted world develops still more.
If one considers capital, to begin with, in the actual process of production as a means of extracting surplus-labour, then this relationship is still very simple, and the actual connection impresses itself upon the bearers of this process, the capitalists themselves, and remains in their consciousness. The violent struggle over the limits of the working-day demonstrates this strikingly. But even within this non-mediated sphere, the sphere of direct action between labour and capital, matters do not rest in this simplicity. With the development of relative surplus-value in the actual specifically capitalist mode of production, whereby the productive powers of social labour are developed, these productive powers and the social interrelations of labour in the direct labour-process seem transferred from labour to capital. Capital thus becomes a very mystic being since all of labour’s social productive forces appear to be due to capital, rather than labour as such, and seem to issue from the womb of capital itself. Then the process of circulation intervenes, with its changes of substance and form, on which all parts of capital, even agricultural capital, devolve to the same degree that the specifically capitalist mode of production develops. This is a sphere where the relations under which value is originally produced are pushed completely into the background. In the direct process of production, the capitalist already acts simultaneously as producer of commodities and manager of commodity-production. Hence, this process of production appears to him by no means simply as a process of producing surplus-value. But whatever may be the surplus-value extorted by capital in the actual production process and appearing in commodities, the value and surplus- value contained in the commodities must first be realised in the circulation process. And both the restitution of the values advanced in production and, particularly, the surplus-value contained in the commodities seem not merely to be realised in the circulation, but actually to arise from it; an appearance which is especially reinforced by two circumstances: first, the profit made in selling depends on cheating, deceit, inside knowledge, skill and a thousand favourable market opportunities; and then by the circumstance that added here to labour-time is a second determining element — time of circulation. This acts, in fact, only as a negative barrier against the formation of value and surplus- value, but it has the appearance of being as definite a basis as labour itself and of introducing a determining element that is independent of labour and resulting from the nature of capital. In Book II, we naturally had to present this sphere of circulation merely with reference to the form determinations that it created and to demonstrate the further development of the structure of capital taking place in this sphere. But in reality this sphere is the sphere of competition, which, considered in each individual case, is dominated by chance; where, then, the inner law, which prevails in these accidents and regulates them, is only visible when these accidents are grouped together in large numbers, where it remains, therefore, invisible and unintelligible to the individual agents in production. But furthermore: the actual process of production, as a unity of the direct production process and the circulation process, gives rise to new formations, in which the vein of internal connections is increasingly lost, the production relations are rendered independent of one another, and the component values become ossified into forms independent of one another.
The conversion of surplus-value into profit, as we have seen, is determined as much by the process of circulation as by the process of production. Surplus- value, in the form of profit, is no longer related back to that portion of capital invested in labour from which it arises, but to the total capital. The rate of profit is regulated by laws of its own, which permit, or even require, it to change while the rate of surplus-value remains unaltered. All this obscures more and more the true nature of surplus-value and thus the actual mechanism of capital. Still more is this achieved through the transformation of profit into average profit and of values into prices of production, into the regulating averages of market-prices. A complicated social process intervenes here, the equalisation process of capitals, which divorces the relative average prices of the commodities from their values, as well as the average profits in the various spheres of production (quite aside from the individual investments of capital in each particular sphere of production) from the actual exploitation of labour by the particular capitals. Not only does it appear so, but it is true in fact that the average price of commodities differs from their value, thus from the labour realised in them, and the average profit of a particular capital differs from the surplus-value which this capital has extracted from the labourers employed by it. The value of commodities appears, directly, solely in the influence of fluctuating productivity of labour upon the rise and fall of the prices of production, upon their movement and not upon their ultimate limits. Profit seems to be determined only secondarily by direct exploitation of labour, in so far as the latter permits the capitalist to realise a profit deviating from the average profit at the regulating market-prices, which apparently prevail independent of such exploitation. Normal average profits themselves seem immanent in capital and independent of exploitation; abnormal exploitation, or even average exploitation under favourable, exceptional conditions, seems to determine only the deviations from average profit, not this profit itself. The division of profit into profit of enterprise and interest (not to mention the intervention of commercial profit and profit from money-dealing, which are founded upon circulation and appear to arise completely from it, and not from the process of production itself) consummates the individualisation of the form of surplus-value, the ossification of its form as opposed to its substance, its essence. One portion of profit, as opposed to the other, separates itself entirely from the relationship of capital as such and appears as arising not out of the function of exploiting wage-labour, but out of the wage-labour of the capitalist himself. In contrast thereto, interest then seems to be independent both of the labourer’s wage-labour and the capitalist’s own labour, and to arise from capital as its own independent source. If capital originally appeared on the surface of circulation as a fetishism of capital, as a value-creating value, so it now appears again in the form of interest-bearing capital, as in its most estranged and characteristic form. Wherefore also the formula capital—interest, as the third to land—rent and labour—wages, is much more consistent than capital—profit, since in profit there still remains a recollection of its origin, which is not only extinguished in interest, but is also placed in a form thoroughly antithetical to this origin.
Finally, capital as an independent source of surplus-value is joined by landed property, which acts as a barrier to average profit and transfers a portion of surplus-value to a class that neither works itself, nor directly exploits labour, nor can find morally edifying rationalisations, as in the case of interest-bearing capital, e.g., risk and sacrifice of lending capital to others. Since here a part of the surplus-value seems to be bound up directly with a natural element, the land, rather than with social relations, the form of mutual estrangement and ossification of the various parts of surplus-value is completed, the inner connection completely disrupted, and its source entirely buried, precisely because the relations of production, which are bound to the various material elements of the production process, have been rendered mutually independent.
In capital—profit, or still better capital—interest, land—rent, labour—wages, in this economic trinity represented as the connection between the component parts of value and wealth in general and its sources, we have the complete mystification of the capitalist mode of production, the conversion of social relations into things, the direct coalescence of the material production relations with their historical and social determination. It is an enchanted, perverted, topsy-turvy world, in which Monsieur le Capital and Madame la Terre do their ghost-walking as social characters and at the same time directly as mere things. It is the great merit of classical economy to have destroyed this false appearance and illusion, this mutual independence and ossification of the various social elements of wealth, this personification of things and conversion of production relations into entities, this religion of everyday life. It did so by reducing interest to a portion of profit, and rent to the surplus above average profit, so that both of them converge in surplus-value; and by representing the process of circulation as a mere metamorphosis of forms, and finally reducing value and surplus-value of commodities to labour in the direct production process. Nevertheless even the best spokesmen of classical economy remain more or less in the grip of the world of illusion that their criticism had dissolved, as cannot be otherwise from a bourgeois standpoint, and thus they all fall more or less into inconsistencies, half-truths and unsolved contradictions. On the other hand, it is just as natural for the actual agents of production to feel completely at home in these estranged and irrational forms of capital—interest, land—rent, labour—wages, since these are precisely the forms of illusion in which they move about and find their daily occupation. It is therefore just as natural that vulgar economy, which is no more than a didactic, more or less dogmatic, translation of everyday conceptions of the actual agents of production, and which arranges them in a certain rational order, should see precisely in this trinity, which is devoid of all inner connection, the natural and indubitable lofty basis for its shallow pompousness. This formula simultaneously corresponds to the interests of the ruling classes by proclaiming the physical necessity and eternal justification of their sources of revenue and elevating them to a dogma.
(Excerpts from Capital Vol. III, Part VII — Revenues and their Sources, Chapter 48 — The Trinity Formula)
All of these plans are in contempt of nation-building. They are based on the rapid extraction and export of Canada’s rich storehouse of natural resources to Asia, the United States and elsewhere for the benefit of a privileged minority. The similarity in substance amongst these plans makes for a conclusion that the North American monopolies, the ruling oligarchs, through their “think tanks” and other planning mechanisms, have dictated their projects through governments, which far from defending public interest represent an executive committee of the richest most powerful international finance capitalists.
Their aim is to rob Canadian resources at maximum speed and profit while wrecking manufacturing and destroying Canadian social programs and public services and without due consideration of the natural environment. These self-serving billionaires who control the North American monopolies want to maximize their profits and eliminate any notion of Canadian sovereignty or democratic empowerment of the actual producers who transform the bounty of Mother Earth into useable products and services. They see Canada as 10 million square kilometres of land mass full of resources and with labour at their beck and call. They do not see a country and people aspiring to guarantee the rights of all within a nation-building project of their own making. Such a nation-building project aims for the empowerment of the people, livelihoods for all, maximum education, health care, old age security and other social programs and public services financed through a self-reliant diverse economy based on manufacturing and agriculture dedicated to providing individual and collective security and a bright future.
The Premier, in a quote that prefaces the Plan on the government website, calls on British Columbians to join her in “telling the world, Canada Starts Here.” The first paragraph of the Plan says that British Columbians have “both the opportunity and obligation to lead our country across the ocean and secure our place in the emerging economies of the Asia Pacific.”
Every measure outlined in the Six Month Progress Report is aimed at satisfying the demands of the monopolies for unfettered access to the natural resources of the province — tax incentives, infrastructure improvements providing roads, ports and rail lines, the training of workers and importation of temporary foreign workers without rights, government subsidies for projects, faster and easier approval of mine expansions, new mines and other projects etc.
The authors cite examples. The developers of the Montney shale gas region, a large area covering northeastern BC and northwestern Alberta, will be charged less than half the price of production of the electricity BC Hydro will provide them, a subsidy of about $150 million per year during peak production, a loss that will be made up by raising electricity rates for BC households and commercial users.
In BC, several popular slogans have developed that reflect the desire for self-reliance and nation-building in a sustainable way such as, “Refine it where you mine it,” and “Saw it where you log it.” This sentiment can be developed into a mass movement to bring the economy under the control of the actual producers in harmony with the hereditary rights of First Nations and sensitive to the needs of Mother Earth.
The law says that as part of its obligations, the privatized Air Canada must “maintain operational and overhaul centres in the City of Winnipeg, the Montreal Urban Community and the City of Mississauga.” Is this the same as maintaining the on-site maintenance activities to which Minister Lebel refers?
The issue of pensions is also a major concern. The union was recently notified that the Aveos pension plan was being wound up. The union reports that a major question that cannot be answered at this time is the solvency funding ratio at the date of windup because no actuarial valuation of the plan was done prior to Aveos’ insolvency filing. This, the union says, is related to the intricacy of the pension plans because until July 2011, the pension plan of the Aveos workers was still part of the Air Canada pension plans and the money is still with Air Canada because the transition of the plan to Aveos has yet to be approved by the Office of the Ministry of Finance that supervises all federally regulated pension plans. That final approval and transfer of money was expected to be done sometime in 2013.
