Tag: capitalism

Notes on Friedrich Engels Anti Duhriing 8 6 2025

~ nicholasjayboyes

Anti-Dühring by Frederick Engels 1877
Part III: Socialism

II. Theoretical

“The materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the production and, next to production, the exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in every society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed and society divided into classes or estates is dependent upon what is produced, how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s brains, not in man’s better insight into eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange. They are to be sought, not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch. The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping. From this it also follows that the means of getting rid of the incongruities that have been brought to light must also be present, in a more or less developed condition, within the changed modes of production themselves. These means are not to be invented, spun out of the head, but discovered with the aid of the head in the existing material facts of production.

“What is, then, the position of modern socialism in this connection?

“The present structure of society — this is now pretty generally conceded — is the creation of the ruling class of today, of the bourgeoisie. The mode of production peculiar to the bourgeoisie, known, since Marx, as the capitalist mode of production, was incompatible with the local privileges and the privileges of estate as well as with the reciprocal personal ties of the feudal system. The bourgeoisie broke up the feudal system and built upon its ruins the capitalist order of society, the kingdom of free. competition, of personal liberty, of the equality, before the law, of all commodity owners, of all the rest of the capitalist blessings. Thenceforward the capitalist mode of production could develop in freedom. Since steam, machinery, and the making of machines by machinery transformed the older manufacture into modern industry, the productive forces evolved under the guidance of the bourgeoisie developed with a rapidity and in a degree unheard of before. But just as the older manufacture, in its time, and handicraft, becoming more developed under its influence, had come into- collision with the feudal trammels of the guilds, so now modern industry, in its more complete development, comes into collision with the bounds within which the capitalistic mode of production holds it confined. The new productive forces have already outgrown the capitalistic mode of using them. And this conflict between productive forces and modes of production is not a conflict engendered in the mind of man, like that between original sin and divine justice. It exists, in fact, objectively, outside us, independently of the will and actions even of the men that have brought it on. Modern socialism is nothing but the reflex, in thought, of this conflict in fact; its ideal reflection in the minds, first, of the class directly suffering under it, the working class.

“Now, in what does this conflict consist?

“Before capitalistic production, i.e., in the Middle Ages, the system of petty industry obtained generally, based upon the private property of the labourers in their means of production; {in the country,} the agriculture of the small peasant, freeman or serf; in the towns, the handicrafts. The instruments of labour — land, agricultural implements, the workshop, the tool — were the instruments of labour of single individuals, adapted for the use of one worker, and, therefore, of necessity, small, dwarfish, circumscribed. But, for this very reason they belonged, as a rule, to the producer himself. To concentrate these scattered, limited means of production, to enlarge them, to turn them into the powerful levers of production of the present day — this was precisely the historic role of capitalist production and of its upholder, the bourgeoisie. In Part IV of Capital, Marx has explained in detail, how since the fifteenth century this has been historically worked out through the three phases of simple co-operation, manufacture and modern industry. But the bourgeoisie, as is also shown there, could not transform these puny means of production into mighty productive forces without transforming them, at the same time, from means of production of the individual into social means of production only workable by a collectivity of men. The spinning-wheel, the hand-loom, the blacksmith’s hammer, were replaced by the spinning-machine, the power-loom, the steam-hammer; the individual workshop by the factory implying the co-operation of hundreds and thousands of workmen. In like manner, production itself changed from a series of individual into a series of social acts, and the products from individual to social products. The yarn, the cloth, the metal articles that now came out of the factory were the joint product of many workers, through whose hands they had successively to pass before they were ready. No one person could say of them: “I made that; this is my product.”

“But where, in a given society, the fundamental form of production is that spontaneous division of labour, there the products take on the form of commodities whose mutual exchange, buying and selling, enable the individual producers to satisfy their manifold wants. And this was the case in the Middle Ages. The peasant, e.g., sold to the artisan agricultural products and bought from him the products of handicraft. Into this society of individual producers, of commodity producers, the new mode of production thrust itself. In the midst of the old division of labour, grown up spontaneously and upon no definite plan, which had governed the whole of society, now arose division of labour upon a definite plan, as organised in the factory; side by side with individual production appeared social production. The products of both were sold in the same market, and, therefore, at prices at least approximately equal. But organisation upon a definite plan was stronger than spontaneous division of labour. The factories working with the combined social forces of a collectivity of individuals produced their commodities far more cheaply than the individual small producers. Individual production succumbed in one department after another. Socialised production revolutionised all the old methods of production. But its revolutionary character was, at the same time, so little recognised that it was, on the contrary, introduced as a means of increasing and developing the production of commodities. When it arose, it found readymade, and made liberal use of, certain machinery for the production and exchange of commodities: merchants’ capital, handicraft, wage-labour. Socialised production thus introducing itself as a new form of the production of commodities, it was a matter of course that under it the old forms of appropriation remained in full swing, and were applied to its products as well.

Friedrich Engels Anti-Duhring

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm

Engels and Karl Marx saw the historical condition of capitalism, much of which is still with us, of the late 19th century. England.  Engels work here in Anti Duhring is some of the most advanced work in historical materialism that was ever written.  The depth of the thought, which traces capitalism from its beginnings in the 16th century in England, to recent conditions, places it as a piece of work that should be enjoyed by anyone who has interest in the genesis of modern  capitalism.

 Here is more:

“In the mediaeval stage of evolution of the production of commodities, the question as to the owner of the product of labour could not arise. The individual producer, as a rule, had, from raw material belonging to himself, and generally his own handiwork, produced it with his own tools, by the labour of his own hands or of his family. There was no need for him to appropriate the new product. It belonged wholly to him, as a matter of course. His property in the product was, therefore, based upon his own labour. Even where external help was used, this was, as a rule, of little importance, and very generally was compensated by something other than wages. The apprentices and journeymen of the guilds worked less for board and wages than for education, in order that they might become master craftsmen themselves. Then came the concentration of the means of production in large workshops and manufactories, their transformation into actual socialised means of production. But the socialised means of production and their products were still treated, after this change, just as they had been before, i.e., as the means of production and the products of individuals. Hitherto, the owner of the instruments of labour had himself appropriated the product, because, as a rule, it was his own product and the assistance of others was the exception. Now the owner of the instruments of labour always appropriated to himself the product, although it was no longer his product but exclusively the product of the labour of others. Thus, the products now produced socially were not appropriated by those who had actually set in motion the means of production and actually produced the commodities, but by the capitalists. The means of production, and production itself had become in essence socialised. But they were subjected to a form of appropriation which presupposes the private production of individuals, under which, therefore, everyone owns his own product and brings it to market. The mode of production is subjected to this form of appropriation, although it abolishes the conditions upon which the latter rests. *8 This contradiction, which gives to the new mode of production its capitalistic character, contains the germ of the whole of the social antagonisms of today. The greater the mastery obtained by the new mode of production over all decisive fields of production and in all economically decisive countries, the more it reduced individual production to an insignificant residium, the more clearly was brought out the incompatibility of socialised production with capitalistic appropriation.

“The first capitalists found, as we have said, wage-labour ready-made for them. But it was exceptional, complementary, accessory, transitory wage-labour. The agricultural labourer, though, upon occasion, he hired himself out by the day, had a few acres of his own land on which he could at all events live at a pinch. The guilds were so organised that the journeyman of today became the master of tomorrow. But all this changed, as soon as the means of production became socialised and concentrated in the hands of capitalists. The means of production, as well as the product, of the individual producer became more and more worthless; there was nothing left for him but to turn wage-worker under the capitalist. Wage-labour, aforetime the exception and accessory, now became the rule and basis of all production; aforetime complementary, it now became the sole remaining function of the worker. The wage-worker for a time became a wage-worker for life. The number of these permanent wageworkers was further enormously increased by the breaking-up of the feudal system that occurred at the same time, by the disbanding of the retainers of the feudal lords, the eviction of the peasants from their homesteads, etc. The separation was made complete between the means of production concentrated in the hands of the capitalists, on the one side, and the producers, possessing nothing but their labour-power, on the other. The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation manifested itself as the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie.

“We have seen that the capitalistic mode of production thrust its way into a society of commodity producers, of individual producers, whose social bond was the exchange of their products. But every society based upon the production of commodities has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social interrelations. Each man produces for himself with such means of production as he may happen to have, and for such exchange as he may require to satisfy his remaining wants. No one knows how much of his particular article is coming on the market, nor how much of it will be wanted. No one knows whether his individual product will meet an actual demand, whether he will be able to make good his costs of production or even to sell his commodity at all. Anarchy reigns in socialised production. But the production of commodities, like every other form of production, has its peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work, despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social interrelations, i.e., in exchange, and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production. The product governs the producers.

“In mediaeval society, especially in the earlier centuries, production was essentially directed towards satisfying the wants of the individual. It satisfied, in the main, only the wants of the producer and his family. Where relations of personal dependence existed, as in the country, it also helped to satisfy the wants of the feudal lord. In all this there was, therefore, no exchange; the products, consequently, did not assume the character of commodities. The family of the peasant produced almost everything they wanted: clothes and furniture, as well as means of subsistence. Only when it began to produce more than was sufficient to supply its own wants and the payments in kind to the feudal lord, only then did it also produce commodities. This surplus, thrown into socialised exchange and offered for sale, became commodities. The artisans of the towns, it is true, had from the first to produce for exchange. But they, also, themselves supplied the greatest part of their own individual wants. They had gardens and plots of land. They turned their cattle out into the communal forest, which also, yielded them timber and firing. The women spun flax, wool, and so forth. Production for the purpose of exchange, production of commodities, was only in its infancy. Hence, exchange was restricted, the market narrow, the methods of production stable; there was local exclusiveness without, local unity within, the mark [114] in the country; in the town, the guild.

“But with the extension of the production of commodities, and especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. The anarchy of social production became apparent and grew to greater and greater height. But the chief means by aid of which the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy of socialised production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organisation of production, upon a social basis, in every individual productive establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of things was ended. Wherever this organisation of production was introduced into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by its side. Where it laid hold of a handicraft, that old handicraft was wiped out. The field of labour became a battle-ground. The great geographical discoveries, and the colonisation following upon them, multiplied markets and quickened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The war did not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities. The local struggles begot in their turn national conflicts, the commercial wars of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. [115] Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world market made the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organisation of production in the individual workshop, and the anarchy of production in society generally.

Engels ibid.

For anyone who claims to have feelings about Marxism they  should read a book like Capital.  Anti Duhring is also one to examine, before one spurs out foolish statements like those put forward by cable television, and its adherents.

“But with the extension of the production of commodities, and especially with the introduction of the capitalist mode of production, the laws of commodity production, hitherto latent, came into action more openly and with greater force. The old bonds were loosened, the old exclusive limits broken through, the producers were more and more turned into independent, isolated producers of commodities. The anarchy of social production became apparent and grew to greater and greater height. But the chief means by aid of which the capitalist mode of production intensified this anarchy of socialised production was the exact opposite of anarchy. It was the increasing organisation of production, upon a social basis, in every individual productive establishment. By this, the old, peaceful, stable condition of things was ended. Wherever this organisation of production was introduced into a branch of industry, it brooked no other method of production by its side. Where it laid hold of a handicraft, that old handicraft was wiped out. The field of labour became a battle-ground. The great geographical discoveries, and the colonisation following upon them, multiplied markets and quickened the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. The war did not simply break out between the individual producers of particular localities. The local struggles begot in their turn national conflicts, the commercial wars of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries. [115] Finally, modern industry and the opening of the world market made the struggle universal, and at the same time gave it an unheard-of virulence. Advantages in natural or artificial conditions of production now decide the existence or non-existence of individual capitalists, as well as of whole industries and countries. He that falls is remorselessly cast aside. It is the Darwinian struggle of the individual for existence transferred from nature to society with intensified violence. The conditions of existence natural to the animal appear as the final term of human development. The contradiction between socialised production and capitalistic appropriation now presents itself as an antagonism between the organisation of production in the individual workshop, and the anarchy of production in society generally.

“The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that “vicious circle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin. But the perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, *9 available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead-weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital. Thus it comes about that the overwork of some becomes the preliminary condition for the idleness of others, and that modern industry, which hunts after new consumers over the whole world, forces the consumption of the masses at home down to a starvation minimum, and in doing this destroys its own home market. “The law that always equilibrates the relative surplus-population, or industrial reserve army, to the extent and energy of accumulation, this law rivets the labourer to capital more firmly than the wedges of Vulcan did Prometheus to the rock. It establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole, i.e., on the side of the class that produces its own product in the form of capital” (Marx’s Capital, p. 671.) And to expect any other division of the products from the capitalistic mode of production is the same as expecting the electrodes of a battery not to decompose acidulated water, not to liberate oxygen at the positive, hydrogen at the negative pole, so long as they are connected with the battery.

Anti Duhring by Friedrich Engels

“We have seen that the ever increasing perfectibility of modern machinery is, by the anarchy of social production, turned into a compulsory law that forces the individual industrial capitalist always to improve his machinery, always to increase its productive force. The bare possibility of extending the field of production is transformed for him into a similar compulsory law. The enormous expansive force of modern industry, compared with which that of gases is mere child’s play, appears to us now as a necessity for expansion, both qualitative and quantitative, that laughs at all resistance. Such resistance is offered by consumption, by sales, by the markets for the products of modern industry. But the capacity for extension, extensive and intensive, of the markets is primarily governed by quite different laws that work much less energetically. The extension of the markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic. Capitalist production has begotten another “vicious circle”.

“As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilised peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every ten years. Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filters off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after break-neck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877) we are going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first as crise plethorique, a crisis from plethora.

“In these crises, the contradiction between socialised production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange, the productive forces are in rebellion against the mode of production which they have outgrown.

Engles ibid.

I really like the revolutionary energy this work by Engels has.  He clearly has a great understanding of his topic, political economy, which shows here.  HIs wisdom is formidable, and all the bourgeoisie can do is kill it with silence. Much like my own works.  It will not be taught in schools, or promoted by the capitalist press.  It is too revolutionary.

“The fact that the socialised organisation of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalists themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available labourers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But “abundance becomes the source of distress and want” (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labour-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social productive forces.

“This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognised, forces the capitalist class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of the socialisation of great masses of means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and of communication are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic exploitation. At a further stage of evolution this form also becomes insufficient: the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to *10 undertake the direction of production. This necessity for conversion into state property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.

Friedrich Engels 1877 Anti Duhring

In this part he calls attention to the state having to take control of industry, and it is not socialism.  His examples of the  the post office, the telegraphs, the railways, has practical importance as the United States Postal Service, and Amtrak, the only passenger railroad.  Telegraphs have become the internet, so this prediction of state control has yet to pass.  But the fact he knocked off two in 1877 is remarkable.

“If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies and state property shows how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist are now performed by salaried employees. The capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first the capitalist mode of production forces out the workers. Now it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

“But the transformation, either into joint-stock companies, or into state ownership, does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies this is obvious. And the modern state, again, is only the organisation that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the general external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine, the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is rather brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

“This solution can only consist in the practical recognition of the social nature of the modern forces of production, and therefore in the harmonising of the modes of production, appropriation, and exchange with the socialised character of the means of production And this can only come about by society openly and directly taking possession of the productive forces which have outgrown all control except that of society as a whole. The social character of the means of production and of the products today reacts against the producers, periodically disrupts all production and exchange, acts only like a law of nature working blindly, forcibly, destructively. But with the taking over by society of the productive forces, the social character of the means of production and of the products will be utilised by the producers with a perfect understanding of its nature, and instead of being a source of disturbance and periodical collapse, will become the most powerful lever of production itself.

“Active social forces work exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand, and reckon with them. But when once we understand them, when once we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends. And this holds quite especially of the mighty productive forces of today. As long as we obstinately refuse to understand the nature and the character of these social means of action — and this understanding goes against the grain of the capitalist mode of production and its defenders — so long these forces are at work in spite of us, in opposition to us, so long they master us, as we have shown above in detail. But when once their nature is understood, they can, in the hands of the producers working together, be transformed from master demons into willing servants. The difference is as that between the destructive force of electricity in the lightning of the storm, and electricity under command in the telegraph and the voltaic arc; the difference between a conflagration, and fire working in the service of man. With this recognition, at last, of the real nature of the productive forces of today, the social anarchy of production gives place to a social regulation of production upon a definite plan, according to the needs of the community and of each individual. Then the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which the product enslaves first the producer and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production: upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production — on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment.

 Engels ibid.      

Anyone who said there was no direction given as to what to replace capitalism with should read this.  Marx and Engels had a very clear picture in their minds about what constituted socialism, and how a society beyond capitalism would look.

“Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which, under penalty of its own destruction, is forced to accomplish this revolution. Whilst it forces on more and more the transformation of the vast means of production, already socialised, into state property, it shows itself the way to accomplishing this revolution. The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, based upon class antagonisms, had need of the state, that is, of an organisation of the particular class, which was pro tempore the exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited classes in the condition of oppression corresponding with the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom, wage-labour). The state was the official representative of society as a whole; the gathering of it together into a visible embodiment. But it was this only in so far as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for the time being, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, the feudal lords; in our own time, the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a state, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not “abolished”. It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase “a free people’s state”, both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency [117]; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the state out of hand. 

“Since the historical appearance of the capitalist mode of production, the appropriation by society of all the means of production has often been dreamed of, more or less vaguely, by individuals, as well as by sects, as the ideal of the future. But it could become possible, could become a historical necessity, only when the actual conditions for its realisation were there. Like every other social advance, it becomes practicable, not by men understanding that the existence of classes is in contradiction to justice, equality, etc., not by the mere willingness to abolish these classes, but by virtue of certain new economic conditions. The separation of society into an exploiting and an exploited class, a ruling and an oppressed class, was the necessary consequence of the deficient and restricted development of production in former times. So long as the total social labour only yields a produce which but slightly exceeds that barely necessary for the existence of all; so long, therefore, as labour engages all or almost all the time of the great majority of the members of society — so long, of necessity, this society is divided into classes. Side by side with the great majority, exclusively bond slaves to labour, arises a class freed from directly productive labour, which looks after the general affairs of society: the direction of labour, state business, law, science, art, etc. It is, therefore, the law of division of labour that lies at the basis of the division into classes. But this does not prevent this division into classes from being carried out by means of violence and robbery, trickery and fraud. It does not prevent the ruling class, once having the upper hand, from consolidating its power at the expense of the working class, from turning its social leadership into an exploitation of the masses.

“But if, upon this showing, division into classes has a certain historical justification, it has this only for a given period, only under given social conditions. It was based upon the insufficiency of production. It will be swept away by the complete development of modern productive forces. And, in fact, the abolition of classes in society presupposes a degree of historical evolution at which the existence, not simply of this or that particular ruling class, but of any ruling class at all, and, therefore, the existence of class distinction itself has become an obsolete anachronism. It presupposes, therefore, the development of production carried out to a degree at which appropriation of the means of production and of the products, and, with this, of political domination, of the monopoly of culture, and of intellectual leadership by a particular class of society, has become not only superfluous but economically, politically, intellectually a hindrance to development. This point is now reached. Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them. Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself. Nor is this all. The socialised appropriation of the means of production does away, not only with the present artificial restrictions upon production, but also with the positive waste and devastation of productive forces and products that are at the present time the inevitable concomitants of production, and that reach their height in the crises. Further, it sets free for the community at large a mass of means of production and of products, by doing away with the senseless extravagance of the ruling classes of today and their political representatives. The possibility of securing for every member of society, by means of socialised production, an existence not only fully sufficient materially, and becoming day by day more full, but an existence guaranteeing to all the free development and exercise of their physical and mental faculties — this possibility is now for the first time here, but it is here. *11

“With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then for the first time man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man who for the first time becomes the real, conscious lord of nature because he has now become master of his own social organisation. The laws of his own social action, hitherto standing face to face with man as laws of nature foreign to, and dominating him, will then be used with full understanding, and so mastered by him. Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history — only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.

Engels Anti Duhring

The  part at the end, of man mastering nature,  should be ecological symbiosis. Mastery of ecology was a second millennium concept; an ideal of mans control over nature, and its right to treat other organisms in the ecology as unwanted, often because they found their appearance unfavorable to humans.

Otherwise though for its time, it is a good piece of work.  There are parts in this book that Engels talks about fixing ecology, like creating Milorganite from human sewage.  Another prediction come true.  

So here is a book to read. Enjoy.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

8 6 2025

From the Archive Article about Thomas Malthus

~ nicholasjayboyes

A Paradigm Shift Away from Laissez Faire Economic Ideas 5 1 2021

There is an idea that had gained traction in the 80’s in particular, that was if capitalists made large profits, and used the money as revenue, the workers would benefit.  This idea was called”laissez faire “.  There were also fantasies about not having to use the state to prop up capitalist industry.

The presence of this large group of people who are mostly service workers, producing mostly luxuries, restaurant workers, for instance, is part of capitalist industry.  Every increase in productivity displaces workers in industry; the machinery becomes more advanced, the labour less skilled, or redundant with the advances in machinery.  

This creates a constant industrial reserve army of workers, what Marx called attention to, who are lucky to find employment, and it is often unskilled if they do, as the job the worker used to do has been eliminated.   It is replaced with a machine, and an unskilled worker.

These workers who have been shed by modern industry are often forced into luxury production, or used as some form of menial servant.  The service industry is basically this.  This is supposed to be  a consolation for a displaced worker, that the wealth will trickle down somehow when the bourgeois create capital through the exploitation of the worker, and the worker can become a low wage service worker now that he is no longer producing necessary commodities.

They spend their revenue on these luxury goods, which do not increase profits.  Luxury production is not goods for the workers to consume.  This form of production is for the bourgeoisie, and is for them an expenditure, rather  than an investment. 

The jobs this supports are not much different  from menial servants, which are what Malthus suggested the workers should be thankful for; a large number of workers displaced by industrial progress harnessed by capitalists who are reduced to menial servants. We see this in the number of service occupations that are not far removed from Mathus’s menial servants.

There is more profit to be made as industry progresses, and machinery that displaces workers increases surplus value when productivity increases. It creates the industrial reserve army of workers, a capitalist phenomenon.  The work is unskilled, and throttling the capitalist mechanism forward creates these workers. 

Perhaps they could content themselves as being porters, barmaids, massage workers, etc.  The surplus value has to go somewhere, its production can only be reinvested to a certain degree.  The population rising justifies the surplus; it is for more workers to be able to labour. 

But what happens to the surplus when the workers can only consume so much of it, as they are paid wages that are not able to consume all they are producing?  If they were paid the value of their labour by the capitalist, there would no longer be a capitalist.  The whole system is based on producing a surplus, and it has to be consumed somehow.  

This provided Malthus and the bourgeois a way out, namely increasing the number of servants and menial labourers.  This would seem to be a root of the laissez faire economic ideas which were popular in the  80’s.

Advancement of machinery lowers the value of the product.  It is not the fault of machinery the capitalist relationship of exploitation exists.  It is a social order, a historical condition. It is the way it is used, that more expensive machinery reduces the workers control of the means of production.  

The presence of large numbers of people who are in menial labour indicates a surplus is coming from somewhere, supporting the unproductive classes.  Trickle down ideas justified the increased number of these people.

But the question of if it really did is being rejected.  It may have created more capital, but it increased the proportion of the working class, and left about 1,000 families in control of most of the joint stock companies shares.  They control the surplus value, and laissez faire was a theory that supported them.  The idea of the state money being somehow separate from profit was just plain silly, every crisis bailouts of trillions of dollars occurs with the state money. 

This is because taxes come from profit, and it is claimed by those who pay into the pot, so to speak, of state money.  It is used in times of crisis to keep the business making a profit.

Clearly all capitalists do this.  Yet they suggest the state should have less role in capitalist industry, which is a contradiction.

But the question of where the surplus goes that cannot be reinvested seems to be answered by expenditure of revenue by our capitalist.  The unproductive expenditure would seem to be at odds with abstinence, which is often preached as justification for a bourgeois to have gotten control of business and made a profit, allowing for them to exploit the working class. 

On one hand you have the capitalist wanting more consumption of his commodity, on the other hand his workers are paid minimum wage, and expected to be spendthrifty.

The consumption of luxury items and menial servants, the basis of the restaurant industry, is from the surplus value created in production for capitalist enjoyment.  It doesn’t matter to them the dishwasher or busboy is an unskilled worker getting minimum wage, working 12 hours a day.  This is supposed to be right, the wealth is trickling down.  But from the perspective of the worker the condition is considerably different.  On one hand you have massive wealth, accumulating capital, on the other an industrial reserve army of workers, who have to labour in luxury production or as service workers for the minimum of wages.  Trickle down economics not only justifies their position,  it perpetuates the exploitation of a class who is destined to labour. 

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

5 1 2021

Fictitious Capital and Speculation

~ nicholasjayboyes

Fictitious Capital and Speculation  

The amount of money the national debt comprises is more than 30 trillion dollars according to the National Debt Clock website.  This money carries interest, and it is this process which is what is referred to below. 

“… fictitious capital,  the object of gambling on the stock exchange, which is actually nothing but the selling and buying of entitlement of a certain part of the annual tax revenue.”

Karl Marx Theories of Surplus Value volume 3 p. 111

“ By fictitious capital Marx here means the capital of the National Debt which is brought into being by loans (of the bourgeois or bourgeois landowner state) and never intended to be invested as capital and on which the creditors are paid interest on the taxes, imposed on the people. “

Footnote in Prometheus books edition #40

“U.S. Budget Deficit & The National Debt. The National Debt is the total amount of money owed to all external parties by the US government. Most of that debt is in the form of outstanding government securities such as treasury bills, notes, and bonds that the government has issued.

Mar 22, 2022

Google search “is the national debt paid for with bonds or stocks?” 8 10 2022

The state’s money comes from profit, taxes are a subdivision of this profit. You have to first have a profit before the capitalist state can pay taxes, and the state’s money is not investment, at least it makes no profit. Rather it is revenue, and revenue refers to money spent that does not create surplus value, the object of capitalist production.  

All production is carried out to create surplus value, if there is state production it is something needed by capitalists they cannot produce and make a profit doing so, but is essential, like city buses, the passenger train, the highway system, etc. so the worker can, for instance, get to work in the factory on time.

The bond market is speculation on the state’s taxation in the future.  It is an investment on something that has not yet been created; there is no commodity 10 years from now when the bond matures that will be sold.  It is pure speculation on the income of taxes, gambling in the stock exchange on the states debts. 

Marx calls this “fictitious capital”, as it creates no real surplus value, rather is speculation on the annual tax money.  If it was capital it would make a profit. The company is not run firstly to pay taxes, then to make profit, rather the opposite, to make a profit then to subdivide this into taxes.  Industrial capital and agricultural capital create the surplus value, it is the unpaid section of the workday.  The state does not create surplus value, it is an expenditure of capitalists, and claimed by them as revenue. 

We are somehow supposed to feel that we have some say over taxes, as if the amount of taxes displayed on the paycheck would be the property of the worker if it did not have to be paid by the bourgeois.

Being privy to his tax expenditures is sort of interesting, perhaps we should have the whole profit printed on the paycheck?  If you want to hear the capitalists cry bloody murder, try bringing a vote on that. If the taxes did not have to be paid, there is no reason to assume the capitalist would not simply pay the worker the same, and keep the money.  It’s not like the worker is buying into something, an investment of sorts.  This money is directly from the profit, the worker does not choose how much he wants to give, and when liberal progressive bourgeoisie soften a little, and use the taxes for ecology or more worker friendly things, there is usually a corresponding retrogression.

This type of speculation indicates fictitious capital is still alive and real, just as it was in 1863 when Marx wrote Theories of Surplus Value.  The bond market is still large, and if it carries interest, the amounts of which are a sizable sum of money.  Have we ever seen taxes go down, under either party? In the real world, not the Ivory towers, life is a different experience.  

Taxes do come from the  worker, it is part of the unpaid section of the workday, the surplus value. When it is paid directly by the worker it is calculated for beforehand by the employer as a part of his wages..  

We thus see a society that is still functioning the same 167 years after being described by Marx in Theories of Surplus Value Volume 3. 

Nicholas Jay Boyes   

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

Purpose of State Industry Under Capitalism. Expenditures at Maximum Limit.

~ nicholasjayboyes

It is interesting to see the capitalists suggesting the state is too expensive, and attempting to pay less money towards it.  This would be the idea of Elon Musk, the white South African billionaire, also the world’s richest man; that the state is wasting money, and its expenditures need to be cut drastically.

I guess we have to look at what is owned by the state.  We have a passenger railroad industry, Amtrak, the Post Office,  and waste pickup among others.

The railroad is owned by the state, and usually loses money.  But every other industrialized nation has passenger railways, with Western Europe having high speed railroads, and advanced locomotives that have their own tracks, that go in the mountains and such.

They serve the practical purpose of connecting people between large cities, from downtown regions to other downtown regions.  It’s like going between downtown Chicago and Milwaukee, you don’t always want to drive your car as you encounter traffic , and even if it did not slow you down (which is ridiculous),  driving to downtown Chicago can be a real adventure.

Even if you fly 150 km south, which uses large amounts of energy compared to Amtrak, you still have to ride the L or rent a car to get from O’hare to downtown.  It is about a 45 minute ride between the train station to O’Hare on the L, making flying down there kind of rough.

So the bourgeoisie rises to the occasion, and even though Amtrak does not make a profit, passenger rail is seen as needed, and paid for by a subdivision of taxes from the profit.  

Perhaps to remind us that the capitalist state does good things too, Musk will try to cut railroad money.   He owns a luxury car company; I guess he must be in favor of auto travel.  

But selling it to anyone who has had to commute downtown, and drive it, is a hard sell.

Perhaps gutting the Post Office would be a source of savings.  They committed the sin of moving the mail in ballots we all use to vote, when we were losing the drop boxes the Republican bourgeoisie have come to detest. 

But the bills from the electricity and gas monopoly come in the mail.  They get the money from the bank automatically, but send a receipt showing your energy usage.  Paper receipts are essential in a failure, such as crashed computers.

So no real help there.  Taxes are also sent by mail; every year it comes time to pay the taxman, and it goes in checks by mail.  

This system seems to be working.  There is also mail that has to leave the country. Ever tried to use United Parcel Service, UPS, to send something outside the country? Try Canada, it’s like 10 times more expensive to send a letter UPS than the mail.    Need to send a package? Milwaukee to near Toronto Canada, about 900 miles, our package would have cost 217 dollars for Worldwide Express plus (same day),  $166 for the end of the day.  It costs $153 for worldwide expedited, and for standard (5 days or less), about $44.  The package was less than a pound.

Perhaps the fact recycling is now being done with Waste Management instead of the city sorter would be some savings.  Considering the city sorter burned down, it is now Waste Management that is sorting recyclables. 

But it certainly looks like using the city to get started recycling was effective.  We always said it would save money to recycle, now it is profitable.  Recycling proved to be a real success.  I guess the only question is if you really want to tamper with a working system of city garbage pickup.  It is one of the few remaining parts of our recycling program still not privatized. It may fall, but the fact remains recycling was accomplished without surplus value as a goal of the movement.  And the city pickup created no surplus value, it was not the reason for recycling, we were concerned about what disposable society was doing to the ecology. It is an example of the state giving in ot the desires of workers to do something that the profit motive was neglecting,, helping ecology. So they can give in sometimes, but once it could be done with a profit Waste Management commenced doing the recycling.

They look an awful lot like a monopoly, or a trust. They seem to be handling most of Milwaukee’s recycling, doing the sorting. Whether they own the recyclables is a more difficult question. Capitalists often prefer monopoly to state ownership, like NASA and Elon Musk. He now has a monopoly on what NASA used to do, launch men to the space station. He gets government contracts to do this. All this has done is move capital from the state to Musk’s pocketbook, from industry that was functioning just fine before capitalists decided they wanted a private company to do the launches.

So here we have 3 or 4 of the things the state owns, and it doesn’t look possible to remove the money being used to keep this industry productive and working.  

Maybe instate college tuition?  That is huge.  But it is a subsidy to the petty bourgeoisie and the middle class, who vote and support the Republicans.  It would be very surprising to see this gravy train come to a halt.  Our bourgeois political economists Ivory Towers are connected to this; good luck getting that through Congress. 

So we are really left to ponder, where will these massive savings Musk wants will come from?  Cutting off welfare, Social Security payments, could keep them from having to spend their sacred profits on senior citizens pensions.  But that is not popular with their following either, many of whom are retired or going to retire soon.  

Given any industry that can make a profit is made to do so, through privatization of nationalized assets, what could be unnationalized?  School systems?  There are capitalists who may be supportive of religion in schools,  but their beloved Constitution divides Church and State very  directly.  They have been promoting using state money for religious schools, they call them charter schools.  But they have shown no real promise of providing a better education than the state schools they are meant to replace.  And the right to an education is a thing all of us value, it is not socially acceptable to have children labouring instead of in school.

Basically the state really cannot be removed more than it already is without causing a social crisis for capitalists.  The industry the state controls is only this way as it is needed but cannot create a profit.  Are we to believe Musk can make the Post Office create a surplus this year?  Welcome back to planet Earth Elon.  It hasn’t created a surplus in decades, and unless something big really changes, expect  it to remain a government institution paid for by the state.  

It is sort of amusing to see the same institution, the state, which is used to hold down the proletariat, shrinking.  In this respect it is hard to take Musk and Donald Trump seriously.  We all remember the movement to pay less money to the riot police, defunding the police became a rallying call for the bourgeois.  No savings there either.  

The more you look at it, the more foolish it looks. It would seem to be an empty threat, from a rich man and his puppet.  It remains to be seen if doctrinaire experiments will follow. 

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

Capitalism and Monopoly

~ nicholasjayboyes

In Friedrich Engels Socialism, Utopian and Scientific, he talks about trusts, cartels, and joint stock companies.   The book is from 1883.  The relevant passages read:

“As a matter of fact, since 1825, when the first general crisis broke out, the whole industrial and commercial world, production and exchange among all civilized peoples and their more or less barbaric hangers-on, are thrown out of joint about once every 10 years. Commerce is at a stand-still, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence; bankruptcy follows upon bankruptcy, execution upon execution. The stagnation lasts for years; productive forces and products are wasted and destroyed wholesale, until the accumulated mass of commodities finally filter off, more or less depreciated in value, until production and exchange gradually begin to move again. Little by little, the pace quickens. It becomes a trot. The industrial trot breaks into a canter, the canter in turn grows into the headlong gallop of a perfect steeplechase of industry, commercial credit, and speculation, which finally, after breakneck leaps, ends where it began — in the ditch of a crisis. And so over and over again. We have now, since the year 1825, gone through this five times, and at the present moment (1877), we are going through it for the sixth time. And the character of these crises is so clearly defined that Fourier hit all of them off when he described the first “crise plethorique”, a crisis from plethora.”

“In these crises, the contradiction between socialized production and capitalist appropriation ends in a violent explosion. The circulation of commodities is, for the time being, stopped. Money, the means of circulation, becomes a hindrance to circulation. All the laws of production and circulation of commodities are turned upside down. The economic collision has reached its apogee. The mode of production is in rebellion against the mode of exchange.“

“The fact that the socialized organization of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance. But “abundance becomes the source of distress and want” (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live. On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social production forces.

“This rebellion of the productive forces, as they grow more and more powerful, against their quality as capital, this stronger and stronger command that their social character shall be recognized, forces the capital class itself to treat them more and more as social productive forces, so far as this is possible under capitalist conditions. The period of industrial high pressure, with its unbounded inflation of credit, not less than the crash itself, by the collapse of great capitalist establishments, tends to bring about that form of the socialization of great masses of the means of production which we meet with in the different kinds of joint-stock companies. Many of these means of production and of distribution are, from the outset, so colossal that, like the railways, they exclude all other forms of capitalistic expansion. At a further stage of evolution, this form also becomes insufficient. The producers on a large scale in a particular branch of an industry in a particular country unite in a “Trust”, a union for the purpose of regulating production. They determine the total amount to be produced, parcel it out among themselves, and thus enforce the selling price fixed beforehand. But trusts of this kind, as soon as business becomes bad, are generally liable to break up, and on this very account compel a yet greater concentration of association. The whole of a particular industry is turned into one gigantic joint-stock company; internal competition gives place to the internal monopoly of this one company. This has happened in 1890 with the English alkali production, which is now, after the fusion of 48 large works, in the hands of one company, conducted upon a single plan,…“

“In the trusts, freedom of competition changes into its very opposite — into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production upon a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly, this is so far still to the benefit and advantage of the capitalists. But, in this case, the exploitation is so palpable, that it must break down. No nation will put up with production conducted by trusts, with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers.

“In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. [4] This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.

“If the crises demonstrate the incapacity of the bourgeoisie for managing any longer modern productive forces, the transformation of the great establishments for production and distribution into joint-stock companies, trusts, and State property, show how unnecessary the bourgeoisie are for that purpose. All the social functions of the capitalist has no further social function than that of pocketing dividends, tearing off coupons, and gambling on the Stock Exchange, where the different capitalists despoil one another of their capital. At first, the capitalistic mode of production forces out the workers. Now, it forces out the capitalists, and reduces them, just as it reduced the workers, to the ranks of the surplus-population, although not immediately into those of the industrial reserve army.

Friedrich Engels Socialism, Utopian and Scientific

Chapter 3

So essentially by 1883 this was visible, the transition of capitalism to what Lenin would call ”imperialism”, in Imperialism, the Highest Form of Capitalism, in 1917.  In 1883 Karl Marx died, and it is not clear what condition he was in near the end of his life, and if he cooperated with Engels to write the book just quoted from.  

Anyhow, the presence of monopoly trusts and joint stock companies is alive and well in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in June of 2024.   The electric and gas company, Wisconsin Electric, owns the electric and natural gas factories, with no competition.  They seem to determine the price, and own the power lines too.  It has been like this as long as I can remember.

Also the cable company Charter (Verizon)  is currently in a cartel with AT&T and the  other cable companies to keep the government from capping the fee for low income people to get internet at $30.  AT&T is good at running monopolies.

“AT&T officially broke up on Jan. 1, 1984. Its 22 members were formed into seven independent Regional Holding Companies or the Baby Bells.”

Google search ATT break up to baby bells

Dec 7, 2020

So AT&T is no stranger to organizing trusts, which is what we see:

“AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon are quietly trying to weaken a $42.5 billion federal program to improve internet access across the nation, aiming to block strict new rules that would require them to lower their poorest customers’ monthly bills in exchange for a share of the aid.”

“In state after state, the telecom firms have blasted the proposed price cuts as illegal — forcing regulators in California, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and elsewhere to rethink, scale back or abandon their plans to condition the federal funds on financial relief for consumers.

Washington Post April 15 2024

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/04/15/telecom-lobbying-price-caps-broadband/

Article continues:

NCTA – the Internet & Television Association, whose members include Charter and Comcast, would be the name of the trust this group is being called.  

“In detailed guidelines issued in 2022, the Biden administration suggested that internet plans should cost consumers no more than $30 per month — though it allowed local officials to propose alternatives.”

“The opposition underscores the vast power and reach of the telecom industry, one of the most formidable political forces in capitals across the country. “

Ibid.

Here we have AT&T, Comcast, and Charter, all together to fight lower cost internet.  Their fixed price in New York is now $65 for internet, and it interferes with their ability to create surplus value if they have to provide cheap internet.  

One may ask why a state program to cap internet prices, and to pay state money to ATT would bother them.

The answer to this is obviously taxes are a part of the surplus value, a division of this.  This is why AT&T, Comcast, and Charter have built a trust, they are trying to refuse to pay part of their surplus value to make the internet affordable to low income people. 

The evidence is precisely what AT&T is doing now, which is to try to build a cartel like they had in telephones with their internet cable business, prior to being broken up in 84.

Lenin wrote in 1917

“Cartels come to an agreement on the terms of sale, dates of payment, etc. They divide the markets among themselves. They fix the quantity of goods to be produced. They fix prices. They divide the profits among the various enterprises, etc. “

“Competition becomes transformed into monopoly. The result is immense progress in the socialisation of production. In particular, the process of technical invention and improvement becomes socialised. “

“The German economist, Kestner, has written a book especially devoted to “the struggle between the cartels and outsiders”, i.e., the capitalists outside the cartels. He entitled his work Compulsory Organisation, although, in order to present capitalism in its true light, he should, of course, have written about compulsory submission to monopolist associations. It is instructive to glance at least at the list of the methods the monopolist associations resort to in the present-day, the latest, the civilised struggle for “organisation”: (1) stopping supplies of raw materials … (“one of the most important methods of compelling adherence to the cartel”); (2) stopping the supply of labour by means of “alliances” (i.e., of agreements between the capitalists and the trade unions by which the latter permit their members to work only in cartelised enterprises); (3) stopping deliveries; (4) closing trade outlets; (5) agreements with the buyers, by which the latter undertake to trade only with the cartels; (6) systematic price cutting (to ruin “outside” firms, i.e., those which refuse to submit to the monopolists. Millions are spent in order to sell goods for a certain time below their cost price; there were instances when the price of petrol was thus reduced from 40 to 22 marks, i.e., almost by half!); (7) stopping credits; (8) boycott.

“Here we no longer have competition between small and large, between technically developed and backward enterprises. We see here the monopolists throttling those who do not submit to them, to their yoke, to their dictation. This is how this process is reflected in the mind of a bourgeois economist:

“Even in the purely economic sphere,” writes Kestner, “a certain change is taking place from commercial activity in the old sense of the word towards organisational-speculative activity. The greatest success no longer goes to the merchant whose technical and commercial experience enables him best of all to estimate the needs of the buyer, and who is able to discover and, so to speak, ‘awaken’ a latent demand; it goes to the speculative genius [?!] who knows how to estimate, or even only to sense in advance, the organisational development and the possibilities of certain connections between individual enterprises and the banks. . . .”

“Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still “reigns” and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial manipulation. At the basis of these manipulations and swindles lies socialised production; but the immense progress of mankind, which achieved this socialisation, goes to benefit . . . the speculators.”

Lenin Imperialism, the Highest Form of Capital

Chapter one

Here we see Lenin reaffirming what Engels said about joint stock companies, trusts, cartels.  Speculation becomes an integral part of commodity production, the Stock Exchange becomes a center of imperialist activity.  The banks use credit in the form of massive amounts of capital, channeled through investment bankers who gamble on joint stock assets on the financial markets.  Speculation runs rife, large bureaucracy becomes the norm for financial capital.  The banks include huge luxury office space in skyscrapers; a class who no longer labours at creating commodities, rather exists by drawing interest from production of commodities,  becomes ascendant to control of markets.  

Sometimes the state is in control of production, like railroads and the Post Office.

“In any case, with trusts or without, the official representative of capitalist society — the state — will ultimately have to undertake the direction of production. [4] This necessity for conversion into State property is felt first in the great institutions for intercourse and communication — the post office, the telegraphs, the railways.”

Engels ibid. see above

The passenger railroad Amtrak is nationalized property, the bourgeoisie cannot get it together to build passenger railroads anymore. The state run Amtrak runs on freight lines often.  The freight lines in the west are all owned by two large companies, Union Pacific and BNSF, the latter owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. I don’t really know how much competition there is between Union Pacific and BNSF, but with a duopoly, you can only  imagine. 

How close to state ownership like Amtrak these railroads are is a matter of opinion.  They are both joint stock companies,  Buffet controls the BNSF, and is not an engineer.  Rather he controls financial capital, as a sort of banker.  He invests capital gained through production for surplus value, gained through his exploitation of the proletariat.

If Amtrak could make a profit, it would no longer be owed by the state.  But even if it was not state owned, it would probably be spun off into one company or two, and would be a monopoly.  Capitalists are way to connected to producing automobiles to produce railroads.  

The Post Office, where the bills from our monopolized companies are sent to us through, is owned by the state. It is not an example of socialism, taxes are also paid through it. It is an essential part of the capitalist system, it is just not making a profit.  They hire veterans who are supportive of the capitalist  system to run it, they get favored status on the entrance exam.  Its leadership is picked by the White House, by capitalists. 

Even if the industry is state owned, it is still part of capitalism.  In this respect it is also a monopoly, the Post Office sets prices for mail delivery.  Of late it has been receiving some competition from UPS, the private post office, which delivers packages. It is an attempt to remove business from the state owned post office, which now moves mostly letters. But the postage rate is set by the capitalist state. 

“Prices and fees are then subject to review by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), an independent agency created by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA) as a successor to the former Postal Rate Commission.

Google search post office rates governed by

June 19 2024

Which means the prices are set by the PRC, not by competition. Here we have the state company determining prices, controlled by capitalists.

Once Marx wrote Capital, he showed very clearly how the capitalist system was functioning.   This was 1863, and it is still relevant, in particular in the east, where capitalism is returning.

But the presence of trusts, cartels, joint stock companies, etc. is a more recent development.  Engels saw it, and Lenin later based his writing on Engels.  He developed Engels works further, when history had proven Engels correct.  The trusts are all real, the speculation part of capitalism.  Engels was correct,  Lenin picked up on this.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic