Monopoly, Trusts., Joint Stock Companies.  Imperialism.  Ecological Consciousness and Materialism.  8 1 2024

In Vladimir Lenin’s book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, he talks about how the system of capitalism gets away from competition and free markets, only to be replaced by trusts, joint stock companies, and state ownership of production.  

This seemed like new territory, but if you read Friedrich Engels Anti- Duhring, you can see that in Karl Marx and Engels time there were already trusts, monopolies, and joint stock companies. By the late 19th century, there was already concentrated ownership of the means of production,  and crisis due to overproduction was a reality.  There had been a crisis about once every ten years, and every time ownership became more concentrated, until there were large trusts and monopolies.

Engels’ Anti- Duhring was published in 1878, Lenin’s Imperialism the Highest Form of Capitalism was published in 1917.  Engels’ observations of the direction modern industry was going was pretty much dead on; by 1917 most large industry in Europe and America was in trusts, or monopoly.  

In this respect Lenin’s observations, although nothing new to Marx and Engles, show the strength of Engels work; he was able to predict the progression of capitalism, from handicrafts, to manufacture, to large industry, then to joint stock companies.  He also predicted the demise of capitalism, and the shift to employee ownership and nationalization without compensation by the workers.

But the point I’m making is Lenin did not discover all he wrote in his book about imperialism, rather Marx and Engels had already shown what trusts and joint stock companies represented by 1875.

Lenin was a gifted thinker, and had a good understanding of Marxism.  By 1917 he grasped what Marx represented, and his book in 1902 What is to be Done? shows he had a knowledge of social democracy in Germany, and was at the beginning of his writing as a Marxist.

What Lenin learned from Engels was the theory of social progression, from the early stages of capitalism, when production was by individuals, or a family unit, for instance raising sheep, shearing wool, using the spinning wheel to make yarn and weaving it etc., then Engels and Marx trace this production, referred to as handicraft production, to the presence of the merchant, who at first trades the surplus from the family, the wool in our example, and provides money and access to goods the individuals doing the handicrafts could not get, often from far away.

The next step is the merchant and property owner begins to put together production in larger groups, manufacture.  The individual weavers, doing handicraft labour, are replaced by a collection of individuals producing not for themselves, but socially.  This is the first stage of commodity production, handicrafts are replaced by collective production, rather than for immediate consumption by the individual who created the product, controlled by a capitalist.

The next stage is large industry, where it is production of commodities, but instead of workers simply put together to produce commodities by dividing up the work, it is replaced by machinery.  The labour is made simpler, the job now working, for instance, a power loom, where the wool is milled by a large machine, and skill is less important, it is a low skilled job primarily.  The worker does not own the loom, rather works for a capitalist, who obtains his product without exchange with the labourer , at least not as any commodity he is selling.    

But the exchange of the commodity is the same as it was under the manufacturer ; the person in charge of the manufacture still simply trades his product for its value. Its value is the amount of labour required to produce it, regardless of whether or not it is paid for.  

And in all commodity production the worker does not own the means of production, and the exchange of the commodity labour power means the worker does not receive the entire value of the commodity he produces, rather part of the value is kept by the capitalist as surplus value.

Large scale industry makes massive collective production a necessity, competition forces the capitalist to invest in ever larger machinery, further making it impossible for the worker to ever be able to purchase the means of production.  The producers work on machinery they do not own, and ownership of the means of production remains in the hands of the bourgeoisie.   Every invention to save labour is used to compel the worker to labour more, to create an ever larger amount of surplus value for the capitalist.

This is the point where capitalism becomes dominated by joint stock companies and trusts.  The trust is when a few large companies control an entire production process, and as a monopoly determine the price of the product, rather than by supply and demand, and competition.

The latter was already happening by the time Engels wrote Anti During in 1875.  Lenin saw this stage in 1917,  as he had left Russia as an exile.  Russia was still an agricultural country just coming out of feudalism and serfdom in 1902, when Lenin wrote What is to be Done?.  

But by a strange confluence of factors, Russia had a revolution in 1917, and Lenin was chosen to lead it.  It was an early attempt to put the ideas of Marx and Engels into practice.  

But the center of these ideas remained Western Europe, as it was here the worker had experienced these stages I mentioned above play out in real  history. In retrospect, we should have seen the shift from trusts and monopoly ownership to the next stage, social ownership, would never really be understood in Russia.  What they tried to do was skip a stage in society, to go from agriculture and manufacture directly to socialism.  

What they built lasted about 75 years, and was for its time a remarkable achievement.  But by 1989 their vision of socialism was faltering, and without a strong movement in the west where large scale industry was in the form of trusts and monopoly, and partial state ownership in the joint stock company as a buyer and owner of shares, a capitalist arrangement, society began to falter,. When Russia returned to capitalism, industry became owned again, sold off at absurd prices to capitalists. Russia could no longer practice the socialism they tried in vain to produce.

The ecological movement was rooted in large industry, satellites to record the warming, for instance, and the windmills and solar panels to stop it. It was tragic; by 1989 Russia was exporting petroleum, nuclear energy, and metals.  When the Chernobyl nuclear reactors melted down, it was clear a main export was a disaster  waiting to happen.   In time even Germany would scrap nuclear power altogether, as the Fukushima reactors in Japan, built by America’s General Electric and Japan’s Hitachi., also melted down. 

This left Russia with a dangerous export nobody wanted: Russian reactors.  But the return to capitalism in 1991 did not make the Russians any more free of nuclear energy, and they’re still trying to export what is basically the same technology used in Chernobyl.   

The Americans and the French are still trying to build nuclear energy, but a reactor  now costs about 10 billion dollars to produce, putting in question if it is an investment to make a profit or a doctrinaire experiment. 

Russia did not make the transition to renewable energy before or after the fall of socialism there.  Compounding their  problems was they had put massive investments in petroleum production, drilling oil with no real concern for ecology.  When it became clear climate change was coming, the pumping of oil the main cause, Russia was reverting to capitalism.

And instead of producing renewable energy, Russia just kept pumping as much oil as possible for export. They never even looked back.

Russia has yet to start a recycling program, and its metals production suffers from this.  The end of socialism did not bring recycling.  Whether their exports of metals are even competitive is questionable; the ecological cost of production cannot always be materially measured.  What does a strip mine for bauxite really cost?   

Had Russia kept trying to build socialism, they may  have become ecological.  But what they went through proved the opposite.  What they built for its time was once state of the art, but without experience of capitalist ways, gained through centuries of living under capitalism in Britain, France and their colonies, the latter built for capitalism, Russia was destined to fail.

The failure of Russia was not due to a failure of Marx and Engels.  At worse we can say ecological thinking was in its infancy then, in Anti- Duhring ecology is only starting to be mentioned.  For example the dreams of modern sewage filtration, and the embrace of Charles Darwin in Anti-Duhring.  

But the socialism of Russia seemed to have no ecological compass,it was designed as a paradise for humans.  But as far as Marx and Engels theories go, they clearly saw the direction the society was taking.  Lenin only sharpened the ideas of the 19th century about trusts and monopolies being in control of this stage of capitalism. But Marx and Engels remain the founders of thought about what modern capitalism represents.  That will not change, the only thing different today is ecological.  Industry has moved forward allowing us to pollute less, and understand our symbiotic relationship with ecology.  It is not  a matter of man’s mastery of nature, this effort was coming to a close in the 21st century.  What we have learned is without ecological consciousness, industry is impossible.  Clearly decomposition is the heaviest industry, and recycling and composting precisely this.  If man had mastery of ecology we wouldn’t be having a climate change problem, clearly symbiosis with nature is the answer, rather than crude mastery through destruction of ecosystems. The question becomes if we ask workers to pressure their boss to , for instance, use less petroleum. Does this sound like a good idea? Should we be surprised when he no longer can ask his boss for ecological progress?

It is left to the workers on their own to fix ecology. Asking the bourgeoisie for concessions results in physical suffering by the worker, following him for the rest of his life. They never forgive anyone who questions their authority, for instance asking them to use less petroleum. It is a compelling reason why capitalism will never reform itself.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

8 1 2024