Value: Studies PDF
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VALUE: STUDIES BY KARL MARX z? Translated and edited by Albert Dragstedt NEW PARK PUBLICATIONS Published by New Park Publications Ltd., 21b Old Town, Qapham, London SW4 OJT Translation and foreword Copyright ©New Park Publications Ltd., 1976 Set up. Printed and Bound by Trade Union Labour Distributed in the United States by: Labor Publications Inc., 133 West 14 Street, New York New York 10011 ISBN 0 902030 82 5 Printed in Great Britain by Astmoor Litho Ltd. (T.U.) 21-22 Arkwright Road, Astmoor, Runcorn, Cheshire Contents Foreword xi 1 I The Commodity II The Form of Value 47 ni Results of the Immediate Process of Production 79 IV Marginal Notes on Wagner 195 Foreword Of the four independent texts of Marx which are presented here, three appear for the first time in English. The fourth, ‘Marginal Notes on Wagner*, is in a new translation. All four are closely related to Volume I of Das Kapital. The first two texts are parts of the first edition as published, while the longer text is most of what was intended as an integral chapter but not worked up for publication, for reasons which are not clear. Such work of research and translation is by no means a flinching from revolutionary tasks through retreating into historical spaces. Rather, it proposes that every available resource must be summoned in confronting the problems of the development of the revolutionary Marxist movement (represented by the International Committee of the Fourth International), at the deepest theoretical level attainable. The betrayal of Marxism and of the international working class by Stalinism and by all the revisionists cannot be answered only through some ‘clarification of programme’ and correct stances on various political questions (however important). It is fundamentally necessary to develop, in struggle against the revisionists, Marxist philosophy, the dialectical method, the theory of value. The revolutionary workers’ movement cannot muddle through to a dialec tical consciousness; a movement without theoretical struggle and crises is not a revolutionary movement. For example, the revisionist Mandel based his ‘economic theory of neo-capitalism’ upon ‘Kondratiev waves’ back in 1964*, a method of combining any and every empirical change as a ‘factor’ to ‘account* for * Cited from Die Langen Wellen der Konjunctur, Berlin 1972, p. 257f. XI XII VALUE the secular movements of capitalist productivity. Sojapan, Italy and Germany had higher rates of industrial growth than other capitalist powers after the Second World War .‘It is therefore necessary to direct one’s attention* ... to the social political decisions defining their economic condition? No ... ‘in the first place to the inequality of growth of numerous industrial branches, which is one of the main keys to the comprehension of the contemporary capitalist world (and the speech of Khrushchev to the CC of the CPSU in December 1963 shows that this is correct not just for capitalist countries).* Evidently, such irresponsible comparisons and analogies could only mean chaos and night for revolutionists who orientated them selves by these perspectives. But it is absolutely inadequate simply to note the disastrous politics entailed or even to consider that the ‘economics* here is continuous to bourgeois theories of‘convergence*. In fact, since Mandel keeps the secret of how many ‘keys’ (main and subordinate) there are, his analysis cannot even be falsified. ‘Inequali ty’ can even be exalted into a ‘contradiction* upon demand. The law of value is, of course, not in the picture: nothing takes place at the theoretical level in these lucubrations except a tabulation of whatever seems to strike the author — since a Kondratiev wave is able to carry any and all empirical flotsam. Only by standing on the granite founda tions of Das Kapital can the movement avoid engulfment by the torrent of notions voided by a revisionist like Mandel. Just as central to the discussion of the problems which must be confronted in the very development of revolutionary opportunities is the longer text. Although it contains a great diversity of contributions of an historical and methodological nature, the formulations of the distinction between unproductive and productive labour have an especial urgency for revolutionary workers’ parties who must have policies for the various sectors of unproductive workers who are thrown into political motion by the destruction of the bases for their economic security. A firm theoretical comprehension of the ways in which the disintegration of capitalism revolutionizes what bourgeois sociology can only throw together into the same classification (‘ter tiary’, ‘white collar’) with non-monopoly manufacturers will enable the working class to form the necessary programmes in order to be in the position of leading the ‘middle class’, rather than be pitted against it. Consider, however, what the revisionist typically proposes. In Intercontinental Press (October 14, p.1327) for example, the following FOREWORD XIII as the producer of surplus-value, since the boundaries between pro- rubbish from// Manifesto (an Italian centrist paper) is commended as a ‘rigorous contribution*:... ‘the proletariat can no longer be defined ductive and non-productive work are less rigid than in the past. From a sociological point of view, the proletariat in an advanced capitalist system is not a precisely definable reality.’ Only an assessment of the very starkest is adequate: II Manifesto’s break with Stalinism was only with its organisation, not its method, and the Pabloite revisionists cannot help adapting right down the line. The consequences are grim: on this basis the movement could not be theoretically armed to contest the ‘fascistification’ of the Italian middle-class. For Marxists, it is the process of capitalist economy rather than ‘sociology’ which defines the proletariat, and they will only become less ‘precisely’ definable as they seize control of the means of production; nor were the boundaries between productive and non-productive labour ever ‘rigid’ in Marx: any particular job might necessitate considerable analysis before one could decide whether (say) a foreman is directly or indirectly creating surplus-value. Trotsky’s words (The Only Road, September 1932) retain their relevance: ‘Under conditions of the decomposition of capitalism and an economic situation without an exit, the petty bourgeoisie strives, seeks to free itself from the irons of its former masters and directors of society and attempts to do so. It is perfectly capable of tying its fate to that of the proletariat. There is only one precondition for that: the petty bourgeoisie must acquire the conviction that the proletariat is capable of leading society on a new course. The proletariat can only inspire in it this conviction by its power, by the sureness of its action, by a skilful offensive against the enemy, by the success of its revolutionary politics. ‘But woe to the revolutionary party which does not show itself up to the demands of the situation! The daily struggle of the proletariat exacerbates the instability of bourgeois society. Strikes and political troubles sharpen the economic situation of the country. The pet ty bourgeoisie could accommodate itself transitionally to increasing privations, if it arrived by experience at the conviction that the proletariat is about to lead it onto a new course. But if the revolutio nary party, despite a struggle of classes which keeps sharpening, again and again reveals itself incapable of uniting the working class around itself, oscillates, wanders, contradicts itself, then the petty XIV VALUE bourgeoisie loses patience and begins to see revolutionary workers as the sponsors of its own poverty.’ Trotsky is thinking primarily of small proprietors here. In Weimar Germany, teachers and government workers had so totally enrolled in the nationalist parties that they could only be written off tactically, as well as students. These sectors are lumped together within the sociological category ‘middle-class’, and the changes they must undergo as the economic crisis deepens become unintelligible to ‘social science’ of a positivistic cast: it is a method which is ‘right’ until it is wrong. But in contemporary Germany, governmental workers are being attacked: ‘Bureaucrats are eating up the state', teachers are under closer state scrutiny than students. The development can be very different this time round because of the penetration of trade union organisation into ‘non-productive workers’ in the United States, for example (AFT, AFSCME), so that the conditions have developed for Marxist leadership to unite all wage-slaves into one fist to strike the political blows at capital necessary on the road to workers’ power. An understanding of the dynamics of class struggle in its effect upon class-consciousness in die case of diversified work-forces is impossible without a firm grip on the method of Capital. Of course one cannot remain with a ‘juridical definition of class’. — ‘To this day, the Trotskyists doggedly maintain that the USSR is not and cannot be a class society because there is no private ownership of the means of production. . . Trotsky was a rather more extreme believer in the primacy of productive forces than Stalin.’ (Sweezy, Monthly Review, November 1974, p. 7f). The method of Pabloism (as illustrated above from the Intercontinental Press') responds to this kind of theoretical scurrility by . . . liquidating the material bases for class differentiation. Trotsky was not a believer in anything, but he never ignored the elementary demands made upon Marxist analysis. For Sweezy, the introduction of Ford, Chase-Manhattan, Fiat into a workers’ state cannot be more significant in assessing the ‘develop ment’ of Stalinism than any bureaucratic manifestation you choose (shooting a peculating bureaucrat, for example). At no point does he propose any other compass for guidance in making a political assessment of the USSR: when and why did he depart from a position of unconditional defence? The concept of private ownership must be grasped dialectically (not empirically by looking in law-books) and its specificity within a society of wage-labour (for profit as means of foreword XV calculation rather than end) must be articulated. Failure to carry his organisational break with Stalinism to the point of theoretical break with his impressionistic ‘sophistication’, leaves Sweezy incapable of an analysis which can reveal the essential nature of the crisis of Stalinism as well as of the movement of class forces in bourgeois democracies. In fact. Stalinist analyses introduce no differentiation to speak of within ‘middle layers of salaried employees’ (as the French Com munist Party puts it). If all that matters is getting them into some ‘people’s anti-monopoly coalition’, why should one ask what concrete problems the economic crisis is confronting them with, in order to elicit a political development? The very existence of a crisis necessitat ing the political independence of salaried workers is what must above all be concealed by Stalinists in this period. That will be increasingly difficult to do as the degeneration of the financial system causes explosions throughout the totality of the reproduction of social capi tal, but only the party with dialectical materialism at its very centre will be able to hear what the essential nature of the experience of such workers really is, in order to turn them confidently to their revolutio nary tasks.
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