The Accumulation Of Capital Part 21

Yet for all these excellent critical comments--the last, particularly acute, actually does to some extent antic.i.p.ate Marx's criticism of this point in _Capital_, volume ii--Rodbertus calmly falls in with the fundamental blunder of the cla.s.sical school and its vulgar followers: to ignore altogether that part of the value of the aggregate product which is needed to replace the constant capital of the society. This way it was easier for him to keep up the singular fight against the 'declining wage rate'.

Under capitalist forms of production, the value of the aggregate social product is divided into three parts: one corresponding to the value of the constant capital, the second to the wage total, i.e. the variable capital, and the third to the aggregate surplus value of the capitalist cla.s.s. In this composition, the portion corresponding to the variable capital is relatively on the decline, and this for two reasons. To begin with, the relation of _c_ to (_v + s_) within _c + v + s_ changes all the time in the direction of a relative increase of _c_ and a relative decrease of _v + s_. This is the simple law for a progressive efficiency of human labour, valid for all societies of economic progress, independently of their historical forms, a formula which only states that living labour is increasingly able to convert more means of production into objects for use in an ever shorter time. And if (_v + s_) decreases as a whole, so must _v_, as its part, decrease in relation to the total value of the product. To kick against this, to try and stop the decrease, would be tantamount to contending against the general effects of a growing labour productivity. Further, there is within (_v + s_) as well a change in the direction of a relative decrease in _v_ and a relative increase in _s_, that is to say, an ever smaller part of the newly created value is spent on wages and an ever greater part is appropriated as surplus value. This is the specifically capitalist formula of progressive labour productivity which, under capitalist conditions of production, is no less valid than the general law. To use the power of the state to prevent a decrease of _v_ as against _s_ would mean that the fundamental commodity of labour power is debarred from this progress which decreases production costs for all commodities; it would mean the exemption of this one commodity from the economic effects of technical progress. More than that: the 'declining wage rate' is only another expression of the rising rate of surplus value which forms the most powerful and effective means of checking a decline of the profit rate, and which therefore represents the prime incentive for capitalist production in general, and for technical progress within this system of production in particular. Doing away with the 'declining wage rate' by way of legislation would be as much as to do away with the _raison d'etre_ of capitalist society, to deal a crippling blow to its entire system. Let us face the facts: the individual capitalist, just like capitalist society as a whole, has no glimmering that the value of the product is made up from the sum total of labour necessary in the society, and this is actually beyond his grasp. Value, as the capitalist understands it, is the derivative form, reversed by compet.i.tion as production costs. While in truth the value of the product is broken down into the values of its component fragments _c_, _v_ and _s_, the capitalist mind conceives of it as the summation of _c_, _v_ and _s_.

These, in addition, also appear to him from a distorted perspective and in a secondary form, as (1) the wear and tear of his fixed capital, (2) his advances on circulating capital, including workers' wages, and (3) the current profits, i.e. the average rate of profit on his entire capital. How, then, is the capitalist to be compelled by a law, say of the kind envisaged by Rodbertus, to maintain a 'fixed wage rate' in the face of the aggregate value of the product? It would be quite as brilliant to stipulate by law for exactly one-third, no more, no less, of the total price of the product to be payable for the raw materials employed in the manufacture of any commodity. Obviously, Rodbertus'

supreme notion, of which he was so proud, on which he built as if it were a new Archimedean discovery, which was to be the specific for all the ills of capitalist production, is arrant nonsense from all aspects of the capitalist mode of production. It could only result from the muddle in the theory of value which is brought to a head in Rodbertus'

inimitable phrase: that 'now, in a capitalist society, the product must have value-in-exchange just as it had to have value-in-use in ancient economy'.[267] People in ancient society had to eat bread and meat in order to live, but we of to-day are already satisfied with knowing the price of bread and of meat. The most obvious inference from Rodbertus'

monomania about a 'fixed wage rate' is that he is quite incapable of understanding capitalist acc.u.mulation.

Previous quotations have already shown that Rodbertus thinks solely of simple commodity production, quite in keeping with his mistaken doctrine that the purpose of capitalist production is the manufacture of consumer goods for the satisfaction of 'human wants'. For he always talks of 'capital replacements', of the need to enable the capitalists to 'continue their enterprise on the previous scale'. His princ.i.p.al argument, however, is directly opposed to the acc.u.mulation of capital.

To fix the rate of the surplus value, to prevent its growth, is tantamount to paralysing the acc.u.mulation of capital. Both Sismondi and v. Kirchmann had recognised the problem of balancing production and consumption to be indeed a problem of acc.u.mulation, that is to say of enlarged capitalist reproduction. Both traced the disturbances in the equilibrium of reproduction to acc.u.mulative tendencies denying the possibility of acc.u.mulation, with the only difference that the one recommended a damper on the productive forces as a remedy, while the other favoured their increasing employment to produce luxuries, the entire surplus value to be consumed. In this field, too, Rodbertus follows his own solitary path. The others might try with more or less success to comprehend the _fact_ of capitalist acc.u.mulation, but Rodbertus prefers to fight the very concept. 'Economists since Adam Smith have one after the other echoed the principle, setting it up as a universal and absolute truth, that capital could only come about by saving and acc.u.mulating.'[268]

Rodbertus is up in arms against this 'deluded judgment'. Over sixty pages of print he sets out in detail that (_a_) it is not saving which is the source of capital but labour, that (_b_) the economists'

'delusion' about 'saving' hails from the extravagant view that capital is itself productive, and that (_c_) this delusion is ultimately due to another: the error that capital is--capital.

v. Kirchmann for his part understood quite well what is at the bottom of capitalist 'savings'. He had the pretty argument: 'Everyone knows that the acc.u.mulation of capital is not a mere h.o.a.rding of reserves, an ama.s.sing of metal and monies to remain idle in the owners' vaults.

Those who want to save do it for the sake of re-employing their savings either personally or through the agency of others as capital, in order to yield them revenue. That is only possible if these capitals are used in new enterprises which can produce so as to provide the required interest. One may build a ship, another a barn, a third may reclaim a desolate swamp, a fourth may order a new spinning frame, while a fifth, in order to enlarge his shoe-making business, would buy more leather and employ more hands--and so on. Only if the capital that has been saved is employed in this way, can it yield interest (meaning profit), and the latter is the ultimate object of all saving.'[269]

That is how v. Kirchmann described somewhat clumsily, but on the whole correctly, what is in fact the capitalisation of surplus value, the process of capitalist acc.u.mulation, which const.i.tutes the whole significance of saving, advocated by cla.s.sical economists 'since Adam Smith' with unerring instinct. Declaring war on saving and acc.u.mulation was quite in keeping with v. Kirchmann's premises, considering that he, like Sismondi, saw the immediate cause of the crises in acc.u.mulation.

Here, too, Rodbertus is more 'thorough'. Having learned from Ricardo's theory of value that labour is the source of all value, and consequently of capital, too, he is completely blinded by this elementary piece of knowledge to the entire complexity of capitalist production and capital movements. Since capital is generated by labour, both the acc.u.mulation of capital, i.e. 'saving', and the capitalisation of the surplus value are nothing but eyewash.

In order to untangle this intricate network of errors by 'economists since Adam Smith', he takes, as we might expect, the example of the 'isolated husbandman' and proves all that he needs by a long-drawn vivisection of the unhappy creature. Here already he discovers 'capital', that is to say, of course, that famous 'original stick' with which 'economists since Adam Smith' have hooked the fruits of a theory of capital from the tree of knowledge. 'Would saving be able to produce this stick?' is his query. And since every normal person will understand that 'saving' cannot produce any stick, that Robinson [Crusoe] must have made it of wood, we have already proved that the 'savings' theory is quite mistaken. Presently, the 'isolated husbandman' hooks a fruit from the tree with the stick, and this fruit is his 'income'.

'If capital were the source of income, already this most elementary and primitive event would have to give evidence of this relation. Would it be true to say, then, without doing violence to facts and concepts, that the stick is a _source_ of income or of part of the income consisting in the fruit brought down? can we trace income, wholly or in part, back to the stick as its _cause_, may we consider it, wholly or in parts, as a _product_ of the stick?'[270]

Surely not. And since the fruit is the product, not of the stick which brought it down, but of the tree which grew it, Rodbertus has already proved that all 'economists since Adam Smith' are grossly mistaken if they maintain that income derives from capital. After a clear exposition of all fundamental concepts of economics on the example of Robinson [Crusoe]'s 'economy', Rodbertus transfers the knowledge thus acquired first to a fict.i.tious society 'without ownership in capital or land', that is to say to a society with a communist mode of possession, and then to a society 'with ownership in capital and land', that is to say contemporary society, and, lo and behold--all the laws of Robinson [Crusoe]'s economy apply point for point to these two forms of society as well. Rodbertus contrives here a theory of capital and income which is the very crown of his Utopian imagination. Since he has discovered that Robinson [Crusoe]'s 'capital' is the means of production pure and simple, he identifies capital with the means of production in capitalist economy as well. Thus reducing capital, with a wave of his hand, to constant capital, he protests in the name of justice and morality against the fact that the wages, the workers' means of subsistence, are also considered capital. He contends furiously against the _concept_ of variable capital, seeing in it the cause of every disaster. 'If only', he grieves, 'economists would pay attention to what I say, if only they would examine without prejudice whether they are right or I. This is the focal point of all errors about capital in the ruling system, this is the ultimate source of injustice against the working cla.s.ses, in theory and practice alike.'[271]

For 'justice' demands that the goods const.i.tuting the 'real wages' of the workers be counted, not as part of capital, but as belonging to the category of income. Though Rodbertus knows very well that the capitalist must regard the wages he has 'advanced' as part of his capital, just like the other part laid out on immediate means of production, yet in his opinion this applies only to individual capitals. As soon as it is a question of the social aggregate product, of reproduction as a whole, he declares the capitalist categories of production an illusion, a malicious lie and a 'wrong'. 'Capital _per se_ (properly so-called), the items which make up capital, capital from the nation's point of view, is something quite different from private capital, capital _a.s.sets_, capital _property_, all that "capital" in the modern use of the term usually stands for.'[272]

An individual capitalist produces by capitalist methods, but society as a whole must produce like Robinson [Crusoe], as a collective owner employing communist methods.

'It makes no difference from this general and national point of view that greater or smaller parts of the aggregate national product are now owned in all the various phases of production by private persons who must not be numbered among the producers proper, and that the latter always manufacture this national aggregate product as servants--without sharing in the ownership of their own product--of these few owners.'

Certain peculiarities of the relations within the society as a whole no doubt result from this, namely (1) the inst.i.tution of 'exchange' as an intermediary, and (2) the inequality in the distribution of the product.

'Yet all these consequences do not affect the movements of national production and the shaping of the national product which are always the same, now as ever (under the rule of communism), no more than they alter in any respect, as far as the _national point of view_ is concerned, the contrast between capital and income so far established.'

Sismondi had laboured in the sweat of his brow, as had Smith and many others, to disentangle the concepts of capital and income from the contradictions of capitalist production. Rodbertus has a simpler method and abstracts from the specific forms determined by capitalist production for society as a whole; he simply calls the means of production 'capital' and the article of consumption 'revenue' and leaves it at that.

'The essential influence of ownership in land and capital applies only to individuals having traffic with one another. If the nation is taken as a unit, the effects of such ownership upon the individuals completely disappear.'[273]

We see that as soon as Rodbertus comes up against the real problem, the capitalist aggregate product and its movements, he exhibits the Utopian's characteristic obtuseness in respect of the historical peculiarities of production. Marx's comment on Proudhon, that 'speaking of society as a whole, he pretends that this society is no longer capitalist' therefore fits him like a glove. The case of Rodbertus again exemplifies how every economist before Marx had been at a loss when it came to harmonising the concrete aspects of the labour process with the perspective of capitalist production which regards everything in terms of value, to mediating between the forms of movement performed by individual capitals and the movement of social capital. Such efforts as a rule vacillate from one extreme to another: the shallow approach of Say and MacCulloch, recognising only the conceptions of individual capital, and the Utopian approach of Proudhon and Rodbertus who recognise only those of the process of labour. That is the context in which Marx's penetration appears in its true light. His diagram of simple reproduction illuminates the entire problem by gathering up all these perspectives in their harmony and their contradictions, and so resolves the hopeless obscurities of innumerable tomes into two rows of figures of striking simplicity.

On the strength of such views on capital and income as these, capitalist appropriation is clearly quite impossible to understand. Indeed, Rodbertus simply brands it as 'robbery' and indicts it before the forum of the rights of property it so blatantly violates.

'This personal freedom of the workers which ought legally to involve ownership in the value of the labour product, leads in practice to their renunciation of the proprietary claims extorted under pressure of ownership in land and capital; but the owners do not admit to this great and universal wrong, almost as though they were instinctively afraid that history might follow its own stern and inexorable logic.'[274]

Rodbertus' 'theory in all its details is therefore conclusive proof that those who praise present-day relations of ownership without being able at the same time to ground ownership in anything but labour, completely contradict their own principle. It proves that the property relations of to-day are in fact founded on a universal violation of this principle, that the great individual fortunes being ama.s.sed in society nowadays are the result of c.u.mulative robbery mounting up in society with every new-born worker since time immemorial.'[275]

Since surplus value is thus branded as 'robbery', an increasing rate of surplus value must appear 'as a strange error of present-day economic organisation'. Brissot's crude paradox with its revolutionary ring--'property is theft'--had been the starting point for Proudhon's first pamphlet, but Rodbertus' thesis is quite another matter, arguing that capital is theft perpetrated on property. It need only be set side by side with Marx's chapter on the transformation of the laws of ownership into the laws of capitalist appropriation--this triumph of historical dialectics in vol. i of Marx's _Capital_--in order to show up Rodbertus' 'priority'. By ranting against capitalist appropriation under the aspect of the 'right of property', Rodbertus closed his mind to capital as the source of surplus value just as effectively as he had previously been prevented by his tirades against 'saving' from seeing the surplus value as a source of capital. He is thus in an even worse position than v. Kirchmann, lacking all qualifications for understanding capitalist acc.u.mulation.

What it amounts to is that Rodbertus wants unrestricted expansion of production without saving, that is to say without capitalist acc.u.mulation! He wants an unlimited growth of the productive forces, and at the same time a rate of surplus value stabilised by an act of law. In short, he shows himself quite unable to grasp the real foundations of capitalist production he wishes to reform, and to understand the most important results of the cla.s.sical economics he criticises so adversely.

It is no more than to be expected, therefore, that Prof. Diehl should declare Rodbertus a pioneer of economic theory on the strength of his 'new theory of income' and of the distinction between the logical and the historical categories of capital (capital properly so-called in contrast to individual capital), that Prof. Adolf Wagner should call him the 'Ricardo of economic socialism', proving himself ignorant at once of Ricardo, Rodbertus and socialism alike. Lexis even judges that Rodbertus is at least the equal of 'his British rival' in power of abstract thinking, and by far his superior in 'virtuosity to lay bare the phenomena in their ultimate connections', in 'imaginative vitality', and above all in his 'ethical approach to economic life'. Rodbertus' real achievements in economic theory however, other than his critique of Ricardo's ground rent, his at times quite clear-cut distinction between surplus value and profit, his treatment of the surplus value as a whole in deliberate contrast with its partial manifestations, his critique of Smith's dogma concerning the a.n.a.lysis of commodities in terms of value, his precise formulation of the periodical character of the crises and his a.n.a.lysis of their manifestations--all these attempts to carry the investigation beyond Smith, Ricardo and Say, promising as such, though doomed to failure because of the confused basic concepts, are rather above the heads of Rodbertus' official admirers. As Franz Mehring already pointed out, it was Rodbertus' strange fortune to be lauded to heaven for his alleged prowess in economics by the same people who called him to task for his real merits in politics. This contrast between economic and political achievements, however, does not concern us here: in the realm of economic theory, his admirers built him a grand memorial on the barren field he had dug with the hopeless zeal of the visionary, while the modest beds where he had sown a few fertile seeds, were allowed to be smothered with weeds and forgotten.[276]

It cannot be said that the problem of acc.u.mulation had on the whole been much advanced beyond the first controversy by this Prusso-Pomeranian treatment. If in the interim the economic theory of harmony had dropped from the level of Ricardo to that of a Bastiat-Schultze, social criticism had correspondingly declined from Sismondi to Rodbertus.

Sismondi's critique of 1819 had been an historical event, but Rodbertus'

ideas of reform, even on their first appearance, were a miserable regression--still more so on their subsequent reiteration.

In the controversy between Sismondi on the one hand and Say and Ricardo on the other, one party proved that acc.u.mulation was impossible because of the crises, and therefore warned against full development of the productive forces. The other party proved that crises were impossible and advocated an unlimited development of acc.u.mulation. Though all argued from wrong premises, each was logically consistent.

v. Kirchmann and Rodbertus both started, were bound to start, from the fact of crises. Here the problem of enlarged reproduction of aggregate capital, the problem of acc.u.mulation, was completely identified with the problem of crises and side-tracked in an attempt to find a remedy for the crises, although the historical experience of fifty years had shown all too clearly that crises, as witnessed by their periodical recurrence, are a necessary phase in capitalist reproduction. One side now sees the remedy in the complete consumption of the surplus value by the capitalist, that is to say in refraining from acc.u.mulation, the other in stabilisation of the rate of surplus value by legislative measures which comes to the same thing, i.e. renouncing acc.u.mulation altogether. This special fad of Rodbertus' sprang from his fervent and explicit belief in an unlimited capitalist expansion of the productive forces and of wealth, without acc.u.mulation of capital. At a time when capitalist production was developed to a degree which was soon to enable Marx to make his fundamental a.n.a.lysis, the last attempt of bourgeois economics to cope with the problem of reproduction degenerated into absurd and puerile Utopianism.

FOOTNOTES:

[257] _Schriften_, vol. iii, p. 176.

[258] Op. cit., vol. i, pp. 53, 57.

[259] _Schriften_, vol. i, p. 206.

[260] Ibid., vol. i, p. 19.

[261] Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 110.

[262] Ibid., p. 144.

[263] _Schriften_, vol. ii, p. 146.

[264] Ibid., p. 155.

[265] Ibid., p. 223.

[266] _Schriften_, vol. ii, p. 226.

[267] Ibid., p. 156.

[268] _Schriften_, vol. i, p. 40.

[269] Op. cit., vol. ii, p. 25.

[270] _Schriften_, vol. i, p. 250.

[271] Ibid., p. 295. Rodbertus reiterates during a lifetime the ideas he had evolved as early as 1842 in his _Towards the Understanding of Our Politico-Economic Conditions_. 'Under present conditions, we have, however, gone so far as to consider not only the wage of labour part of the costs of the goods, but also rents and capital profits. We must therefore refute this opinion in detail. It has a twofold foundation: (_a_) a wrong conception of capital which counts the wage of labour as part of the capital just like materials and tools, while it is on the same level as rent and profit; (_b_) a confusion of the costs of the commodity and the advances of the entrepreneur or the costs of the enterprise' (_Towards the Understanding of Our Politico-Economic Conditions_, Neubrandenburg & Friedland, G. Barnovitz, 1842, p. 14).

[272] _Schriften_, vol. i, p. 304. Just so already in _Towards the Understanding of Our Politico-Economic Conditions_, 'We must distinguish between capital in its narrow or proper sense, and the fund of enterprise, or capital in a wider sense. The former comprises the actual reserves in tools and materials, the latter the fund necessary for running an enterprise under present conditions of division of labour.

The former is capital absolutely necessary to production, and the latter achieves such relative necessity only by force of present conditions.

Hence only the former is capital in the strict and proper meaning of the term; this alone is completely congruent with the concept of national capital' (ibid., pp. 23-4).

[273] _Schriften_, vol. i, p. 292.