What Is Marxism?
By Emile Burns, 1939
PUBLISHERS’ FOREWORD
However, Emile Burns’ WHAT IS MARXISM?, as an introduction for new students, or as a handy refresher for past students and lecturers, will be found an adequate guide. It is not just another booklet to be read and forgotten. It is a concise outline of Marxism that will repay repeated readings and serious study. New investigators of Marxism will find themselves stimulated to seek more knowledge of the theories of Scientific Socialism, as expounded by Marxists; and every Marxist, no matter what his degree of knowledge, will find within these pages a method of exposition most helpful to the imparting of Marxist theory, whether in the lecture hall, or study group.
Finally, we direct the attention of those coming into contact with Marxism for the first time, through the pages of this booklet, that the only banner-bearers of Marxist theory are the Communist Parties of the various countries; that this Party, alone, gives practical application to these principles … everywhere and at all times, on the historical conditions for the time being existing …” That the Communists everywhere support revolutionary movements against the existing order of things.” And they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.”
The application of Marxian principles by the. architect and builder of the mighty U.S.S.R., The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik), is a lesson in combining theory with practice that must ever be heeded by those who would devote their lives to the emancipation of mankind.
Melbourne, 1945
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CHAPTER 1.
A SCIENTIFIC VIEW OF THE WORLD
Marxism is a general theory of the world in which we live, and of human society as a part of that world. It takes its name from Karl Marx (1818-1883), who, together with Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), worked out the theory during the middle and latter part of last century.
They set out to discover why human society is what it is, why it changes, and what further changes are in store for mankind. Their studies led them to the conclusion that these changes – like the changes in external nature – are not accidental, but follow certain laws. This fact makes it possible to work out a scientific theory of society, based on the actual experience of men, as opposed to the vague notions about society which used to be (and still are) put forward – notions associated with religious beliefs, race and hero-worship, personal inclinations or utopian dreams.
Marx applied this general idea to the society in which he lived – mainly capitalist Britain – and worked out the economic theory of capitalism by which he is most widely known. But he always insisted that his economic theories could not be separated from his historical and social theories. Profits and wages can be studied up to a certain point as purely economic problems; but the student who sets out to study real life and not abstractions soon realises that profits and wages can only be fully understood when employers and workers are brought into the picture; and these in turn lead on to a study of the historical stage in which they live.
The scientific approach to the development of society is based, like all science, on experience, on the facts of history and of the world around us. Therefore Marxism is not a completed, finished theory. As history unfolds, as man gathers more experience, Marxism is constantly being developed and applied to the new facts that have come to light. The most out standing of these developments, since the death of Marx and Engels, have been made by V. I. Lenin (1870-1924), and by Joseph Stalin, who has continued Lenin’s work in building up the new socialist society in Russia.
The result of the scientific approach to the study of society is knowledge that can be used to change society, just as all scientific knowledge can be used to change the external world. But it also makes clear that the general laws which govern the movement of society are of the same pattern as the laws of the external world. These laws which hold good universally, both for men and things, make up what may be called the Marxist philosophy or view of the world.
The following chapters deal with Marxist theory in the fields which are of most immediate interest. It is essential, however, for the student to realise from the outset that Marxism does not claim recognition because it is based on abstract moral principles, but because it is true. And because it is true, it can be and should be used to rid humanity for ever of the evils and misery which afflict so many in the world today, and to help men and women forward to full development in a higher form of society.
CHAPTER II.
THE LAWS OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
The history of mankind is usually presented in the form of a record of wars between nations and the exploits of individual monarchs, generals or statesmen. Sometimes the motives of these individuals are described in a purely personal way – their ambitions led them to conquer territory, or their moral or immoral outlook caused them to adopt certain policies. Sometimes they are described as acting for the sake of the country’s honour or prestige, or from some motive of religion.
Marxism is not satisfied with such an approach to history.
In the first place, it considers that the real science of history must deal with the peoples, and only with individuals in so far as they represent something much wider than themselves – some movement of the people.
For example, Cromwell is important not because of his own outlook and individual actions, but because he played an important part in the movement of a section of the English people against the old order. He and his movement broke down the barriers of feudalism, and opened the way for the widespread development of capitalism in Britain. What matters is not the record of his battles and his religious outlook and intrigues. But the study of Cromwell’s place in the development of British production and distribution, the understanding of why, at that period and in Britain, the struggle developed against the feudal monarchy; the study of the changes actually brought about in that period – these are important; they are the basis of a science of history. By using the knowledge derived from such a study (along with the study of other periods and of other peoples), it is possible to draw up general theories – laws of the development of society, which are just as real as the laws of chemistry or any other science. And once we know these laws we can make use of them, just as we can make use of any scientific law – we can not only foretell what is likely to happen, but can act in such a way as to make sure that it does happen; or, as in the case of fascism, to stop it happening.
So Marxism approaches the study of history in order to trace the natural laws which run through all human history, and for this purpose it looks not at individuals but at peoples. And when it looks at peoples (after the stage of primitive society) it finds that there are different sections of the people, some pulling one way and some another, not as individuals, but as classes.
What are these classes? In the simplest terms, they are sections of the people who get their living in the same way. In feudal society the monarch and the feudal lords got their living from some form of tribute (whether personal service or payments in kind) provided by their “serfs,” who actually produced things, mainly on the land. The feudal lords were a class, with interests as a class – they all wanted to get as much as possible out of the labour of their serfs; they all wanted to extend their land and the number of serfs working for them. On the other hand, the serfs were a class, with their own class interests. They wanted to keep more of what they produced for themselves and their families, instead of handing it over to their lords; they wanted freedom to work for themselves; they wanted to do away with the harsh treatment they received at the hands of their lords, who were also their law-makers and their judges. An Anglo-Saxon writer expressed the feelings of a serf who had to plough his lord’s land: “Oh, sir, I work very hard. I go out in the dawning, driving the oxen to the field and yoke them to the, plough. Be the winter never so stark, I dare not stay at home for fear of my lord; but every day I must plough a full acre or more (Quoted by Eileen Power in Medieval People, p. 22).
Hence in every feudal country there was a constant struggle going on between the lords and the serfs, sometimes only on an individual basis, or a group of serfs against their particular lord; sometimes on a much wider basis, when large numbers of serfs acted together, in order to try to get their general conditions of life made easier. The revolt of 1381 in England, led by John Ball and Wat Tyler, is an instance of this. The full story is told in H. Fagan’s Nine Days that Shook England. Similar risings of serfs or peasants occurred in Germany, Russia and many other countries, while the struggle was continually going on on a smaller scale.
In addition to the obligations to work their lord’s land, there were many forms of tribute to be paid in kind – not only a share of the produce of their own holding, but products of the handicraft of the serfs and their families. There were some specialised producers – for example, makers of weapons and equipment. And there were merchants who bought surplus products, trading them for the products of other regions or countries. With the increase of trade. these merchants began to need more than the surplus produced by serfs and not required by their lords; they therefore began to develop organised production for the market, using the whole-time labour of serfs who had been freed or had succeeded in escaping from their lords. Some of the freed serfs also managed to set themselves up in the towns as free craftsmen, producing cloth, metalware and other articles. So in a slow development, lasting hundreds of years, there grew up within feudal production for local consumption, also production for the market, carried on by independent artisans and employers of wage-labour. The independent artisans also gradually developed into employers of labour, with “journeymen” working for them for wages. So from the sixteenth century onwards there was coming into existence a new class, the industrial capitalist class, with its “shadow,” the industrial working class. In the countryside, too, the old feudal obligations had broken down – personal service was changed into money rent, the serfs were transformed in many cases into free peasants, each on his holding, and the landowner began to pay wages for the labour-power he needed on his own farms; in this way, too, the capitalist farmer came into existence, along with the farm labourer earning wages.
But the growth of the capitalist class in town and country did not automatically put an end to the former ruling class of feudal lords. On the contrary, the monarchy, the old landed aristocracy and the Church did their utmost to use the new capitalism for their own benefit. The serfs who had been freed or escaped to the towns had also escaped from having to pay tribute (in personal service, in kind or in money) to the lords. But when the descendants of these serfs grew relatively rich, they began to find that they were not really free – the king and the feudal nobility made them pay taxes of all kinds, imposed restrictions on their trade, and prevented the free development of their manufacturing business.
The king and the old landed nobility were able to do this because they controlled the machinery of the State – armed forces, judges and prisons; while they also made the laws. Therefore the growth of the capitalist class also meant the growth of new forms of class struggle. The capitalists had to engage in a struggle against the monarchy and the feudal lords, a struggle which continued over many centuries. In some relatively backward countries it is still going on – but in Britain and France, for example, it has been completed.
How did this come about?
By the capitalist class taking power from the former feudal rulers, by means of an armed revolution. In Britain, where this stage was reached far earlier than in other countries. the continuous struggle of the growing capitalist class against taxation and restrictions reached a high point in the middle of the seventeenth century. These restrictions were holding back the expansion of the capitalist form of production. The capitalists tried to get them removed by peaceful means – petitions to the king, by refusing to pay taxes, and so on; but nothing far-reaching could be won against the machinery of the State. Therefore the capitalists had to meet force with force; they had to rouse the people against the king, against arbitrary taxation and trade restrictions, against the arrests and penalties imposed by the king’s judges for all attempts to break through the feudal barriers. In other words, the capitalists had to organise an armed revolution, to lead the people to rise in arms against the king and the old forms of oppression – to defeat the former rulers by military means. Only after this had been done was it possible for the capitalist class to become the ruling class, to break down all barriers to the development of capitalism, and to make the laws needed for this.
It is perfectly true that this capitalist revolution in England is presented in most histories as a fight against Charles I as a despotic, scheming monarch of Roman Catholic leanings, while Cromwell is represented as a highly respectable anti-Catholic, with great ideals of British freedom. The struggle, in short, is presented as a moral, religious fight. Marxism goes deeper than the individuals, and deeper than the watchwords under which the fight was carried on. It sees the essence of the struggle of that period as the fight of the rising capitalist class to take power from the old feudal ruling class. And in fact it was a clear turning-point: after that revolution, and the second stage of it in 1689, the capitalist class won a considerable share in the control of the State.
In England, owing to the early stage at which the capitalist revolution came, the victory of the capitalists was not decisive and not complete. As a result of this, though the old feudal relations were largely destroyed, the landowning class (including rich recruits from the towns) to a great extent survived and itself developed as capitalist landlords, merging with the moneyed interests over the next two centuries, and keeping a considerable share in the control of the State.
But in France, where the whole process came later, and the capitalist revolution did not take place until 1789, the immediate changes were more far-reaching. To the Marxist, however, this was not due to the fact that Rousseau and other writers had written works proclaiming the rights of man, nor to the fact that the popular watchwords of the revolution were “Liberty-Equality-Fraternity.” Just as the essence of the Cromwell revolution is to be found in the class struggle and not in the religious watchwords, so the essence of the French revolution is to be found in the class relations and not in the abstract principles of justice inscribed on its banners.
Marx says of such periods: “Just as we cannot judge an individual on the basis of his own opinion of himself, so such a revolutionary period cannot be judged from its own consciousness.” What is important for the understanding of revolutionary periods is to see the classes struggling for power, the new class taking power from the old; even if, consciously or unconsciously, the leaders of the new class proclaim their fight to be for what are apparently abstract ideas or issues not directly connected with the question of class interests and class power.
The Marxist approach to history sees the struggle between contending classes as the principal driving force in the development of human society. But along with the struggle of classes goes also the growth of science of man’s power over nature, man’s power to produce the things he needs for life. The discovery of power-driven machinery was an immense step forward in production; but it was not only this. It also brought with it the destruction of the producer owning his own spinning wheel and weaving-frame, who could no longer compete against rival producers using power-driven machinery which enabled a worker to spin and weave in one day more than the artisan could produce in a week. Therefore the individual producer, who owned and used his own instruments of production, gave place to two groups of people – the capitalist class, who owned the new power-driven machinery but did not work it; and the industrial working class, which did not own any means of production, but worked (for wages) for the owner.
This change came about unconsciously, without being planned by anyone; it was the direct result of the new knowledge gained by a few people who applied it to production for their own advantage, but without in any way foreseeing or desiring the social consequences that followed from it. Marx held that this was true of all changes in human society: man was steadily increasing his knowledge, applying his new-found knowledge to production, and by this causing profound social changes. These social changes led to class conflicts, which took the form of conflicts over ideas or institutions – religion, parliament, justice and so on – because the ideas and institutions then current had grown up on the basis of the old mode of production and the old class relations.
Take for example the institution of the “estates.” These, in England, used to be the Lords Spiritual, the Lords Temporal and the Commons; each “estate” had separate representation in early parliaments. Although these still survive in the formal division between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the “estates” have lost all significance with the sweeping away of feudalism and the new division of society into capitalists and workers. In France there is not a trace of the old division into “estates;” and in White America such “estates” were never heard of, because at the time of the growth of the United States feudalism was already nearing its end.
What brought such ideas and institutions into existence and what brought them to an end? Marx pointed out that always and everywhere the ideas and institutions only grew up out of the actual practice of men. The first thing was: the production of the means of life – of food and clothing and shelter. In every historical social group – the primitive tribe, slave society, feudal society, modern capitalist society – the relations between the members of the group depended. on the form of production. Institutions were not thought out in advance, but grew up out of what was customary in each group; institutions, laws, moral precepts and other ideas merely crystallised, as it were, out of customs, and the customs were directly associated with the form of production.
It follows, therefore, that when the form of production changed – for example from feudalism to capitalism – the institutions and ideas also changed. What was moral at one stage became immoral at another, and vice versa. And naturally at the time when the material change was taking place – the change in the form of production – there was always a conflict of ideas, a challenge to existing institutions.
With the actual growth of capitalist production came the conflict with the feudal relations – in the new form of production capital was to be in practice supreme. So there came up conflicting ideas: not divine right, but “no taxation without representation,” the right to trade freely, and new religious conceptions expressing more individual right, less centralised control. But what seemed to be free men fighting to the death for abstract rights and religious forms was in fact the struggle between rising capitalism and dying feudalism; the conflict of ideas was secondary.
It is for this reason that Marxists do not set up abstract “principles” for the organisation of society, like the writers of Utopias. Marxism considers that all such “principles” as have appeared in human thought merely reflect the actual organisation of society at a particular time and place, and do not and cannot hold good always and everywhere. Moreover, ideas that seem to be universal – such as the idea of human equality – in fact do not mean the same thing in different stages of society. In the Greek city States, the idea of the equal rights of men did not apply to slaves; the “liberty, equality and fraternity” of the great French Revolution meant the liberty of the rising capitalist class to trade freely, the equality of this class with the feudal lords, and the fraternity of this class with itself – the mutual aid against feudal oppressions and restrictions. None of these ideas applied to the slaves in the French colonies, or even to the poorer sections of the population in France itself.
Hence we can say that most ideas, especially those connected with the organisation of society, are class ideas, the ideas of the dominant class in society, which imposes them on the rest of society through its ownership of the machinery of propaganda, its control of education and its power to punish contrary ideas through the law courts, through dismissals and similar measures. This does not mean that the dominant class says to itself: Here is an idea which of course isn’t true, but we will force other people to believe it, or at least not to deny it in public. On the contrary, the dominant class does not as a rule invent such ideas. The ideas come up out of actual life – the actual power of the feudal lord or of the rich industrialist who has been created a peer is the material basis for the idea that “noblemen” are superior to other people. But once the idea has come up and been established, it becomes important for the dominant class to make sure that everyone accepts it – for if people do not accept it, this means that they will not act in accordance with it – for example, that they will challenge the king’s divine right (and perhaps even go to the length of cutting off his head). So the dominant class of any period and any country – not only Japan – does what it can to prevent “dangerous thoughts” from spreading.
But, it may be asked, if ideas are secondary, if the primary fact is always the material change in the form of production, how can any “dangerous thoughts” arise? How, in short, can people think of a new form of production before it actually arises?
The answer is that they cannot think of it before the conditions for its existence have appeared. But they are made to think of it when these conditions have appeared, by the very conflict between the old conditions and the new forces of production.
For example, with the actual growth of production by wage labour, and the necessity to sell the products in order to realise the profit, the early capitalist was brought up sharply against the feudal restrictions on trade. Hence the idea of freedom from restrictions, of having a say in fixing taxes, and so on. It was not yet capitalist society, but the conditions for a capitalist society had arisen, and out of these came the capitalist ideas.
It is the same with socialist ideas. Scientific as opposed to utopian socialist ideas could only arise when the conditions for socialist society had developed – when large-scale production was widespread, and when it had become clear, through repeated crises of over-production, that capitalism was holding back social progress.
But although ideas can only arise from material conditions, when they do arise they certainly exert an influence on men’s actions and therefore on the course of things. Ideas based on the old system of production are conservative – they hold back men’s actions, and that is why the dominant class in each period does everything it can to teach these ideas. But ideas based on the new conditions of production are progressive – they encourage action to carry through the change to the new system, and that is why the dominant class regards them as dangerous. Thus the idea that a social system is bad which destroys food to keep up prices, at a time when large numbers of citizens are in a state of semi-starvation, is clearly a “dangerous thought.” It leads on to the idea of a system in which production is for use and not for profit; and this leads to the organisation of socialist and communist parties, which begin to work to bring about the change to the new system.
The Marxist conception of social development (known as “historical materialism”) is therefore not a materialist “determinism” – the theory that man’s actions are absolutely determined by the material world round him. On the contrary, man’s actions, and the material changes which these actions bring about, are the product partly of the material world outside him, and partly of his own knowledge of how to control the material world. But he only gets his knowledge through experience of the material world, which, so to speak, comes first. He gets the experience of the material world not in an abstract, arm-chair way, but in the course of producing the things he needs for life. And as his knowledge increases, as he invents new methods of production and operates them, the old forms of social organisation become a barrier, preventing the full use of the new methods. Man becomes aware of this from the actual practice of life; he fights first against particular evils, particular barriers created by the old form of social organisation. But inevitably he is drawn into a general fight against the whole former system.
Up to a certain point, the whole process by which new productive forces develop out of the old system is unconscious and unplanned, and so also is the struggle against the old forms of social organisation which preserve the old system. But always a stage is reached when the old class relations are seen to be the barrier preventing the new productive forces from being fully used; it is at this stage that the conscious action of “the class with the future in its hands” comes into play.
But the process of developing the productive forces need no longer be unconscious and unplanned. Man has accumulated sufficient experience, sufficient knowledge of the laws of social change, to pass on to the next stage in a conscious and planned way, and to set up a society in which production is conscious and planned. Engels says (Handbook of Marxism, p 299):
“The objective, external forces which have hitherto dominated history will then pass under the control of men them selves. It is only from this point that men, with full consciousness, will fashion their own history.”
CHAPTER III.
CAPITALIST SOCIETY
A great part of Marx’s life was devoted to the study of capitalism – the method of production which had succeeded feudalism in Britain and was establishing itself all over the world in the course of last century. The aim of his study was to discover the “law of motion” of capitalist society. Capitalism had not always existed, but had grown up gradually; it was not the same in Marx’s day as it had been at the time of the “industrial revolution” in Britain in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The problem was not merely to describe the capitalist method of production of his own time, but to make an analysis which would show why and in what direction it was changing. This approach to the question was new. Other writers on economic matters took capitalism as it was, and described it as if it was a fixed, eternal system; for Marx, this method of production, like all others in history, was changing. The result of his study was therefore not only a description, but a scientific forecast, because he was able to see the way in which capitalism was in fact developing.
Capitalist production grew out of individual production of feudal times. The typical feudal form of production was production for local consumption: food, clothing and other articles were produced by the serfs for themselves and for their feudal lords. With the development of a surplus – that is,, more articles than the particular group needed – the surplus was sold in exchange for articles brought in from other countries or from other parts of the country. But the main part of production was still for consumption by the producing group and the lord who had feudal rights over it.
It was only when the feudal units began to break up that this form of production gradually gave way to production for profit, which is the essential mark of capitalism. Production for profit required two things: someone with enough resources to buy means of production (looms, spinning-machines and so on); and, secondly, people who had no means of production themselves, no resources by using which they could live. In other words, there had to be “capitalists,” who owned means of production, and workers whose only chance of getting a livelihood was to work the machines owned by the capitalists.
The workers produced things, not directly for themselves or for the personal use of their new “lord,” the capitalist, but for the capitalist to sell for money. Things made in this way are called “commodities” – that is, articles produced for sale on the market. The worker received wages, the employer received profit – something that was left after the consumer had paid for the articles, and after the capitalist had paid wages, the cost of raw materials and other costs of production.
What was the source of this profit? Marx pointed out that it could not possibly come from the capitalists selling the products above their value – this would mean that all capitalists were all the time cheating each other, and where one made a “profit” of this kind the other necessarily made a loss, and the profits and losses would cancel each other out, leaving no general profit. It therefore followed that the value of an article on the market must already contain the profit: the profit must arise in the course of production, and not in the sale of the product.
The enquiry must therefore lead to an examination of the process of production, to see whether there is some factor in production which adds value greater than its cost (its own value).
But first it is necessary to ask what is meant by “value.” In ordinary language, value can have two quite distinct meanings. It may mean value for use by someone – a thirsty man “values” a drink; a particular thing, may have a “sentimental value” for someone. But there is also another meaning in ordinary use – the value of a thing when sold on the market, by any seller to any buyer, which is what is known as its “exchange value.”
Now it is true that, even in a capitalist system, particular things may be produced for particular buyers and a special price arranged; but what Marx was concerned with was normal capitalist production – the system under which millions of tons of products of all kinds are being produced for the market in general, for any buyer that can be found. What gives products their normal “exchange value” on the market? Why, for example, has a yard of cloth more exchange value than a pin?
Exchange value is measured in terms of money; an article is “worth” a certain amount of money. But what makes it possible for things to be compared with each other in value, whether through money or for direct exchange? Marx pointed out that things can only be compared in this way if there is something common to all of them, of which some have more and some less, so that a comparison is possible. This common factor is obviously not weight or colour or any other physical property; nor is it “use value” for human life (necessary foods have far less exchange value than motor cars) or any other abstraction. There is only one factor common to all products – they are produced by human labour. A thing has greater exchange value if more human labour has been put into its production; exchange value is determined by the “labour-time” spent on each article.
But, of course, not the individual labour-time. When things are bought and sold on a general market, their exchange value as individual products is averaged out, and the exchange value of any particular yard of cloth of a certain weight and quality is determined by the “average socially necessary labour-time” required for its production.
If this is the general basis for the exchange value of things produced under capitalism, what determines the amount of wages paid to the actual producer, the worker? Marx put the question in precisely the same way: what is the. common factor between things produced under capitalism and labour-power under capitalism, which we know also has an exchange value on the market? There is no such factor other than the factor which we have already seen determines the exchange value of ordinary products – the labour-time spent in producing them. What is meant by the labour-time spent in producing labour-power? It is the time (the average “socially necessary” time) spent in producing the food, shelter, warmth and other things
which keep the worker from week to week. In normal capitalist society, the things necessary to maintain the family of the worker have also to be taken into account. The labour-time necessary for producing all these things determines the exchange value of the worker’s labour-power, which he sells to the capitalist for wages.
But while, in modern capitalist society, the time spent in maintaining the worker’s labour-power may be only four hours a day, his power to labour lasts eight, ten or more hours a day. For the first four hours each day, therefore, his actual labour is producing the equivalent of what is paid to him in wages; for the remaining hours of his working day he is producing “surplus value” which his employer appropriates. This is the source of capitalist profit – the value produced by the worker over and above the value of his own keep – that is, the wages he receives.
The brief statement of Marx’s analysis of value and surplus value needs to be made more exact in many ways, and there is not space to cover every variation. But a few of the general points can be indicated.
The term “exchange value” has been used, because this is the basis of the whole analysis. But in actual life things hardly ever sell at precisely their exchange value. Whether material products or human labour power, they are bought and sold on the market at a price, which may be either above or below the correct exchange value. There may be a surplus of the particular product on the market, and the price that day may be far below the correct exchange value; or, if there is a shortage, the price may rise above the value. These fluctuations in price are, in fact, influenced by “supply and demand,” and this led many capitalist economists to think that supply and demand was the sole factor in price. But it is clear that supply and demand only cause fluctuations about a definite level. What that level is, whether it is one penny or a hundred pounds, is clearly not determined by supply and demand, but by the labour-time used in producing the article.
The actual price of labour-power – the actual wages paid – is also influenced by supply and demand; but it is influenced by other factors as well – the strength of trade union organisation in particular. Nevertheless, the price of labour-power in ordinary capitalist society always fluctuates around a definite level – the equivalent of the worker’s keep, taking into account that the various grades and groups of workers have varying needs, which are themselves largely the result of previous trade union struggles establishing a standard above the lowest minimum standard for existence.
The labour-power of different grades of workers is not, of course, identical in value; an hour’s work of a skilled engineer produces more value than an hour’s work of an unskilled labourer. Marx showed that such differences were in fact accounted for when articles were sold on the market, which, as he put it, recorded a definite relation between what the more skilled worker made in an hour and what the labourer made in an hour.
How does this difference in value come about? Marx answers: not on any “principle” that skill is ethically better than lack of skill or any other abstract notion. The fact that a skilled worker’s labour-power has more exchange value than the labourer’s is due to exactly the same factor that makes a steamship more valuable than a rowing-boat – more human labour has gone to the making of it. The whole process of training the skilled worker, besides the higher standard of living which is essential for the maintenance of his skill, involves more labour-time.
Another point to note is that if the intensity of labour is increased beyond what was the previous average, this is equivalent to a longer labour-time; eight hours of intensified labour may produce values equivalent to ten or twelve hours of what was previously normal labour.
What is the importance of the analysis made by Marx to show the source of profit? It is that it explains the class struggle of the capitalist period. In each factory or other enterprise the wages paid to the workers are not the equivalent of the full value they produce, but only equal to about half this value, or even less. The rest of the value produced by the worker during his working day (i.e. after he has produced the equivalent of his wages) is taken outright by his employer. The employer is therefore constantly trying to increase the amount taken from the worker. He can do this in several ways: for example, by reducing the worker’s wages; this means that the worker works a less proportion of the day for himself, and a greater proportion for the employer. The same result is achieved by “speeding up” or intensifying the labour – the worker produces his keep in a smaller proportion of the working day, and works a larger proportion for his employer. The same result, again, is achieved by lengthening the working day, which increases the proportion of the working day spent in working for the employer. On the other hand, the worker fights to improve his own position by demanding higher wages and shorter hours and by resisting “speeding up.”
Hence the continuous struggle between the capitalists and the workers, which can never end so long as the capitalist system of production lasts. This struggle, starting on the basis of the individual worker or group of workers fighting an individual employer, gradually widens out. Trade union organisation on the one hand, and employers’ organisation on the other, bring great sections of each class into action against each other. Finally, political organisations of the workers are built up, which as they extend can bring all industrial groups and other sections of the people into action against the capitalist class. In its highest form, this struggle becomes revolution – the overthrow of the capitalist class and the establishment of a new system of production in which the workers do not work part of the day for the benefit of another class. This point is worked out more fully in later chapters; the essential thing to note is that the class struggle under capitalism is due to the character of capitalist production itself – the antagonistic interests of the two classes, which continually clash in the process of production.
Having analysed wages and profits, we now pass to the study of capital. First it must be noted that the “surplus value” created by the worker in the course of production is not all kept by his employer. It is, so to speak, a fund from which different capitalist groups take their pickings – the landowner takes rent, the banker takes interest, the middleman takes his “merchant’s profit,” and the actual industrial employer only gets what is left as his own profit. This in no way affects the preceding analysis; it only means that all these capitalist sections are, as it were, carrying on a certain subsidiary struggle among themselves for the division of the spoils. But they are all united in wanting to get the utmost possible out of the working class.
What is capital?
It has many physical forms: machinery, buildings, raw materials, fuel and other things required for production; it is also money used to pay wages for production.
Yet not all machinery, buildings and so on, and not even all sums of money are capital. For example, a peasant on the west coast of Ireland may have some sort of building to live in, with a few yards of ground round it; he may have some livestock, and a boat of some sort; he may even have some little sum of money. But if he is his own master and nobody else’s none of his property is capital. That is the position also of the peasant in the Soviet Union today.
Property (whatever the physical form) only becomes capital in the economic sense when it is used to produce surplus value; that it, when it is used to employ workers, who in the course of producing things also produce surplus value.
What is the origin of such capital?
Looking back through history, the early accumulation of capital was very largely open robbery. Vast quantities of capital in the form of gold and other costly things were looted by adventurers from America, India and Africa. But this was not the only way in which capital came into being through robbery. In Britain itself, the whole series of “Enclosure Acts” stole the common lands for the benefit of the capitalist farmers. And in doing so, they deprived the peasantry of their means of living, and thus turned them into proletarians – workers with no possibility of living except by working the land taken from them for the benefit of the new owner. Marx shows that this is the real origin of capital (“primitive accumulation”) and not the legend of abstemious men who “saved” from their meagre living, which he ridicules in the following passage (Handbook of Marxism, p. 376):
“This primitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race … In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one the diligent, intelligent and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living … Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority, that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work.” But capital does not remain at the level of primitive accumulation; it has increased at an enormous rate. Even if the original capital was the product of direct robbery, what is the source of the additional capital piled up since that period?
Indirect robbery, Marx answers. Making the worker work more hours than is necessary for his keep, and appropriating the value of what he makes in those extra hours of work – the “surplus value.” The capitalist uses a part of this surplus value for his own maintenance; the balance is used as new capital – that is to say, he adds it to his previous capital, and is thus able to employ more workers and take more surplus value in the next turnover of production, which in turn means more capital – and so on ad infinitum.
Or, rather, it would go on to infinity but for the fact that other economic and social laws come into play. In the long run, the most important obstacle is the class struggle, which from time to time hinders the whole process and eventually ends it altogether by ending capitalist production. But there are many other obstacles to the smooth course of capitalist development, which also arise out of the nature of capitalism.
Economic crises occur which check the expansion of capital, and even lead to the destruction of part of the capital accumulated in previous years. “In these crises,” Marx says (Handbook of Marxism, p 29), “there broke out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity – the epidemic of over-production.” In feudal society, a bumper wheat harvest would have meant more food for everyone; in capitalist society, it may mean starvation for workers thrown out of employment because the wheat cannot be sold, and therefore less wheat is sown next year.
The features of capitalist crises are now only too familiar: there is over-production, therefore new production declines and workers are unemployed; their unemployment means a further decline in the market demand, so more factories slow down production; new factories are not put up, and some are even destroyed (shipyards on the north-east coast or cotton spindles and looms in Lancashire); wheat and other products are destroyed, though the unemployed and their families suffer hunger and illness. It is a madman’s world; but at last the stocks are used up or destroyed, production begins to increase, trade develops, there is more employment – and there is steady recovery for a year or two, leading to an apparently boundless expansion of production; until suddenly once more there is over-production and crisis, and the whole process begins again.
What is the cause of these crises? Marx answers: it is a law of capitalist production that each block of capital strives to expand – to make more profit, and therefore to produce and sell more products. The more capital, the more production. But at the same time, the more capital, the less labour-power employed: machinery takes the place of men (what we know now as “rationalisation” of industry). In other words, the more capital, the more production and the less wages, therefore the less demand for the products made. (It should perhaps be made clear that it need not be an absolute fall in total wages; usually the crisis comes from a relative fall, that is, total wages may actually increase in a boom, but they increase less than total production, so that demand falls behind output).
This disproportion between the expansion of capital and the relative stagnation of the workers’ demand is the ultimate cause of crises. But, of course, the moment at which the crisis becomes apparent, and the particular way it develops, may depend on quite other factors – to take the most obvious example from Britain in 1939, a big armaments production (i.e. a Government “demand” which is right outside the normal capitalist process) may postpone and partially conceal for a time the inevitable crisis.
Then there is another most important factor in the development of capitalism – competition. Like all other factors in capitalist production, it has two contradictory results. On the one hand, because of competition to win larger sales of products, each capitalist enterprise is constantly trying to reduce production costs, especially by saving wages – through direct wage reductions or by speeding-up or other forms of rationalisation. On the other hand, those enterprises which succeed in getting enough capital to improve their technique and produce with less labour are thereby contributing to the general process described above – the reduction of demand owing to the total wages paid out being reduced.
Nevertheless, the enterprise which improves its technique makes a higher rate of profit for a time – until its competitors follow suit and also produce with less labour. But not all its competitors can follow suit. As the average concern gets larger and larger, greater amounts of capital are needed to modernise a plant, and the number of companies that can keep up the pace grows smaller. The other concerns on to the wall – they become bankrupt and are either taken over by their bigger competitors or are closed down altogether. “One capitalist kills many.” Thus in each branch of industry the number of separate concerns is steadily reduced: big trusts appear, which more or less dominate a particular field of industry. Thus out of capitalist competition comes its opposite – capitalist monopoly. This brings out new features, which are described in the next chapter.
NEXT: The Imperialist Stage of Capitalism
¶
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