There has been a movement in Europe and America towards a capitalist state, which reached a crescendo in the late 20th century, and is still with us. This mechanism of capitalism consolidates ownership of the land, and industry, increasingly in the hands of a small aristocracy that own everything.
The group in control of the means of production are the modern bourgeoisie. Through cable television, and other outdated mediums such as regular radio fed television broadcasting, paper newspapers, etc. have been used for propaganda purposes by this aristocracy.
It is easily accessible, and paid for by capitalist advertising, a form of propaganda that if nothing else portrays a smiling face in the marketplace, the privately owned reality forced upon the ignorant worker. Its political bent, due to the presence of the people who pay for the broadcasts, the ownership of the companies attempting to sell commodities by advertising, who are all capitalists, and support the more extreme form of them , the Republican bourgeoisie, as this is encouraged by the economic system of modern capitalism.
Often the industry promoted is not metric, like gasoline powered automobiles from Detroit, a product of an industry intact still in a 20th century condition. The bourgeois press directly uses propaganda when it is time for suffrage, and the broadcast is not in the metric system. The local political leader is on in 30 second attack ads when the worker wants to see local television news.
This system uses ignorance to promote a vision of capitalism that is not in tune with reality. In Europe, the concession of suffrage to the workers is used to justify expropriating employee owned shops. Once political leadership can overcome the pressure of its workers, who for one reason or another have slipped back to capitalism, through the mechanism of ignorance and cable television, employee ownership is targeted and removed by the Republican bourgeoisie.
Without employee ownership, democracy doesn’t really mean much. Given the factory is where the worker finds himself most of the time, democracy would seem to be in order there. But where is the suffrage for the manager? Or the owner? It is no longer present after employee ownership is removed.
The European Union is best at this expropriation process, all the while suggesting they are expanding democracy.
The ignorant worker, who tunes into the cable television broadcast, the station is also owned by the bourgeoisie, receives his social conditioning through this medium. The internet is gradually removing this old system, corroding the cable television monopoly; ad block technology, and paying for the news rather than the free enterprise method of advertising paying for news is becoming the dominant model.
The internet is a revolution. The tech giants are trying to control the system, but can only do so much. The Washington Post costs 10$ a month, you pay for it. It is owned by Jeff Bezos, not the journalists. The New York Times and Reuters are similar, you pay them directly. Youtube is another one worth paying for, the purpose of this is so there are no advertisements.
Society is materially changing, the main mechanism of control is ignorance. People are being told to believe things about subjects they need to find out about for themselves, by reading books. Philosophy and political economy in particular; many people have feelings about what socialism represents, yet have never read Marx’s Capital, even just volume One. Or have feelings about the ancient world and have never been exposed to Aristotle or Plato.
The internet again is coming to the rescue; Amazon Prime delivers new and used books we had a hard time getting before, like works by Marx and Engels now accessible by internet for low prices.
Giving up the cable subscription for the internet saves money. People are paying a hundred dollars a month for cable, and at best we can say it includes the internet. An internet connection costs about 50$, and it is advertisement free when you pay for it.
As the material conditions change, outdated ideas resort to outdated technology to transmit their messages. Cable television, radio broadcast television, AM radio, are all examples of outdated industry dominated by the Republican bourgeoisie. Control of cable television consumes these people. It is their main prerogative, and they control the companies advertising, and even have their political leaders on the station when suffrage occurs,to give us their bourgeois propaganda.
It is a little harder to control the internet. It is more advanced, and cheaper to use and produce than the outdated mediums. You have to be able to read and write to use it.
It doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon, the dinosaurs of 20th century capitalism look unable to stop the march of material and social development, which are leading to an ecological and economic awakening.
Divide Between Town and Country. Large Landowners and Unions. 11 28 2025
Much like eastern Europe, America is in a period of reaction. The bourgeoisie has leveraged the rural people, some of whom are workers in large scale agriculture, to people who believe they are small businessmen growing on farms as capitalists.
The latter group, not exactly small farmers but also not large scale agriculture, are sort of becoming a petty bourgeoisie, who sell their products as commodities to the merchants. They may have a few hands, but often are still labouring.
These people supported Trump. In so doing, they also supported the large scale production of food, even though they have seen many of their counterparts lose their farms, only to have their lands subsumed by large landowners.
They feel it is not simply the large scale agriculture bourgeois who have spared them, probably due to their political bent, that has given them prosperity, and allowed them to keep farming. Although they are clearly the chosen ones, they feel it has been their good business sense that has kept the farm. This is why they support Trump, even though economically they are on shaky ground; a few bad harvests and that’s it, bankruptcy follows.
Harnessing this form of ignorance is common throughout capitalist society. It is rare for one to acknowledge his posh lifestyle simply came through a process of vetting, undertaken by the upper class into their ranks. Rather ignorance most often restricts the knowledge of this from the petty bourgeoisie.
The view of Trump having made himself rich as a businessman; a sort of man who became rich with his own money and business sense, is fiction. Trump was born into money, his dad was a real estate tycoon from New York, who helped his son get into casinos at a young age, like Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. He built a small empire after his dad died in luxury properties, he did not trade commodities, rather traded the profit from capitalist industry, the money kept as surplus value by capitalists for their own personal enjoyment, rather than a product like an auto part, sold as a commodity. Trump has been chosen to represent his class, as he has always been,from his start as a casino owner to his presidency. It is doubtful he would be intelligent enough to be pulling some sort of scam, supporting the proletariat from his position as president.
He has no experience as a commodity producing capitalist, yet the farmers liked him, and although he was not elected in 2016, appointed rather in 2017 after losing the popular vote; then, following his loss in suffrage in 2020, questioned the validity of American elections by having a group of ruffians , ex military and police, storm the capital on January 6th 2020.
It seemed like he was gone then, but by leveraging the ignorant by the bourgeoisie, just like in Russia and Eastern Europe, where employee ownership ended due to ignorance of what capitalism really represented, Trump came back. American antisocialist laws are present here, with political prisons for Jews, communists, etc. which echo the rise of Hitler. Trump regularly calls his opponents lunatics, sick individuals, etc. like Hitler and his SS in the thirties.
The large landowners are represented in government by the constitution, that keeps them at the table so to speak with large capitalist industry. There was a time agriculture was all the land was used for under the British, when America was a colony. The planters who rebelled understood that industry would follow revolution, that the north in particular would build heavy industry, eventually challenging the South where the slave plantations were.
This was rectified by having the upper house of Congress have 2 seats for each state. It keeps large scale agriculture in power; the areas with less population, or a rural population of a sort of reserve army of workers., like the city is present. It’s like the poor whites during the Civil war supporting the landowners; they were no help to them, but they supported the slaveowners who used them for an army to fight the north, where slavery was not present, as in Wisconsin, or minimally present, like Lincoln’s state of Illinois.
The phenomenon of support for landowners, not the family farm, rather the more industrial form of agriculture, heavily mechanised petroleum dependent large scale agriculture, is what Trump harnessed. Without unions, large agriculture’s labour is low paid, often m Mexican immigrants many of whom are in the country illegally. There is little or no movement to nationalise the land, rather a distant belief in a capitalist who will buck the system, and support the little guy.
You don’t get rich supporting the little guy. Trump is a billionaire, he represents capital, he is the living embodiment of capital, it is his hand that creates the surplus value.
Perhaps it is the idea a person can go to the casino, and walk out a millionaire. You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than winning at Trump’s casino. It is the roughest place in town, where if you don;t spend enough you get kicked out. If you went there hungry you would get bounced for asking for food. It’s a dog eat dog reality.
In the cities it is a little harder for capitalists. Libraries, museums, theaters, etc. are part of urban society, and the proletariat is thus a little harder to fool. There is less ignorance in the city, rural society has none of these advantages. Collectively large scale industry comprises much of the activity in the city, with buzzing ports, retail capital workers, large commodity producing recycling operations. It is a stark difference to rural America, reflecting a massive divide between town and county.
Rectifying this divide will take time. Nationalising the land will follow, as large landowners have to increasingly reckon with a union of farmers at the site of harvest and in the fields. The cooperative markets will be where the money comes from, and outreach for the small and large cooperatives that will replace the capitalist landowner will come from here.
The state will not be buying the land for the cooperative. The workers may have to use the money created in production to buy additional land, or nationalizing the land if the landowners refuse to cooperate with their workers.
This will not be easy, but will start to rectify the huge gap between town and country. Getting used to being in a union at work on the farm, much like his proletarian cousin in the city, will follow.
The system is geared against them. There will be losses, but also victories. As recognition of membership in the class of labourers comes, that they do not own the stocks in the means of production, collectively the poor rural man will support more radical leadership. He is up against the constitution, this may take time. But don’t give up on the countryman, instead remove the ignorance.
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.
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.
Money Capital. Interest. Role of the Central Bank. 4 21 2025
“Shortly after markets opened, Trump referred to Powell as a “major loser” on Truth Social and said the U.S. economy could slow without an immediate reduction in the cost of money amid the fallout from his trade war.”
Washington Post 4 21 2025
Note the “cost of money” This refers to money capital that is paid interest for its part in the production of commodities. The money is first loaned to, for example, an industrial capitalist, who uses the money to produce a commodity, then sells it, and repays the loan, with interest.
The interest is comes from the part of the surplus value created by the industrial capitalist, he calculates ahead of time that he is going to have to pay the money capitalist interest. The cost of the money capital is referred to as the price of money. It is the amount of surplus value that money as a commodity produces when loaned out.
Trump is making the price of money to be lower; Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell is in charge of this. Apparently there is a separation of powers agreement that Trump cannot just order interest rates to go down, instead we have Powell sort of independent to make these conclusions.
It may make the price of money lower, but it also must interfere with the average rate of profit. The interest rate is a tangible condition, and it is speculated on by money capitalists. Where the money capitalist keeps his money that he expects interest to accumulate on, would seem to have to sort of compete with industrial capital. If there was more than the average rate of profit to be made on money capital as opposed to industrial capital, people would invest their money in money capital instead of industrial capital.
But without industrial capital, there can be no money capital. There is no goose that lays golden eggs. The Alchemists of the Middle Ages thought all they had to do was figure out how to make gold and they could have anything they wanted. They failed to see the process by which productive labour created commodities. The money capitalists can get so caught up in speculation they forget industrial capital is where money capital comes from. The result is a bubble, where speculation runs rampant, often on high risk investments, backed by nothing more than paper.
It would seem the bubble is starting to break now, and Trump’s capitalists want the price of money to be cheaper. If it is cheaper to get a loan, you can invest the money and bring in more profit by speculating on money capital.
The irrational form of money as a commodity, which can be bought or sold for a price, would explain why in the previous article I noted the stock market feels they are trading commodities. The commodity money is bought and sold at the exchange, thus they trade commodities.
The exchange of commodities is not where this surplus value is created. All wealth is the product of human labor, whether or not it is paid for,. All this exchanging is a cost of production, money capital is originally a product of productive labour, the surplus value this labour has created is where money capital is derived.
Thus the foolishness of suggesting exchange of a commodity produces wealth. The merchant may make trading commodities run more smoothly for the industrial capitalist, but his wealth is from production. Exchange, even if he does make out like a bandit sometimes, the money he makes is a cost of production for the capitalist, the money comes out of industrial capital’s profit.
The accumulation of money capital has reached absurd amounts, the state’s debt alone is 32 trillion dollars. In this case it is not even speculation on a material commodity, there is no commodity or production of a commodity speculated on several years down the road. This practice, paid for by bonds, is also connected to the interest rate. The federal reserve uses its money it gets paid the interest rate for, the price of money, to loan out to money capitalists, who loan it to industrial capitalists, to produce commodities.
Calculation of interest on his profit is where money capital is formed. It has a sort of legal agreement, the money loaned has to be paid back with interest, regardless of if the capitalist made a profit producing commodities. There is a legal relationship between the leader and burrower, to pay a certain interest rate on the loan regardless of if it was used productively.
The price of money is real, and Trump knows what it means. He may not have had experience running a factory, but as a luxury real estate person, he knows what lowering the interest rate will do. It makes it easier to loan out money capital. Speculation on in the process by those in between the industrial capital and the money capital runs rampant.
When looking at the concentration and consolidation of the joint stock companies, the socialization of commodity production must be noted. As the trusts and monopolies dictate production, they are planning what to build, and how much to charge for the commodities they produce in large factories.
Agriculture uses the state as a planning organization; the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) disburses tens of billions of dollars to large farmers in an attempt to decide what will be grown, how, and by who.
Competition was used to determine by supply and demand the price of a commodity in the earlier stages of capitalism. The companies would produce as much as possible to drive their competitor out of business, and to maximize surplus value. The USDA keeps this under control by paying farmers not to grow, a central planning structure indicating socialization of production, under capitalism.
Production of many of the main commodities, gas and electricity for individual households and businesses, for instance, is owned and controlled by Wisconsin Electric and Gas (WEPCO). There is no competition, the price is determined by the production of gas from the wells, and coal from the mines, and then wherever WEPCO can get away with selling it for a price they set, not by competition with other companies,it is sold by them ot consumers.
Much of the price of gas and oil, according to the monthly bill, is distribution of gas through the lines, which are wholly owned by WEPCO. The electricity lines, the high voltage ones, as well as the smaller lines, are all property of WEPCO. This is a large part of the cost, and we know WEPCO makes a profit through its ownership of these means of production.
WEPCO is no longer using nuclear energy;. There is only one electrical generator left in Point Beach, 25 km from Green Bay,the last of Wisconsin’s nuclear energy experiment. It was built in 1970, and has been running for 55 years now. It was designed to go about 40 years, but the bourgeois fetish with nuclear energy has meant the constant danger to Green Bay of a meltdown to squeeze another ten years out of it.
Obviously Point Beach’s days are numbered. Nuclear energy is too dirty, it leaves a spent reactor and waste product mankind has yet to find a way of safely disposing of for 100,000 years, the length of time before the waste is safe to be handled by humans again.
There are tons of this stuff just sitting in the spent reactors, a monument to bourgeois disdain for ecology, and future generations who live and use Lake Michigan.
WEPCO now uses coal and gas for generation of electricity, and with Donald Trump in power this will probably not change, at least not soon. His idea that climate change is not important should keep coal being used for power generation for some time to come. Even switching to natural gas looks unlikely as Trump supports coal production.
I have previously noted the state of the grocery markets, the presence of a smaller and smaller number of owners of the stores. WalMart, Kroger, and Albertsons control most of Milwaukee”s markets. Piggly Wiggly is Albertsons, Pick and Save is Kroger. These two stores used to have competition, but given they were planning to merge, how much competition are we to believe is occurring? They planned to remove competition through a merger, they are no longer together?
Which ultimately leads to revolutionary activity, such as employee owned stores like Woodmans. The product is sold at its va;lue, determined by how much labour it contains, whether or not it is paid for. .
The alternative of a cooperative for production, proletarian socialization of industry, is the direction society seems to be traversing.
But there is more. Karl Marx said “ the antithesis of capital is living labour”. He meant that the individual doing the labour a capitalist would be doing, instead of the contractor, a capitalist, is revolutionary. Doing it yourself also removes the capitalist from production. Plumbing your own drain, for instance, removes a capitalist company coming with the plumber. This saves money, and the instructions for small repairs of this type are all over YouTube.
Youtube brings us much closer to socialism; there are recipes on it a person can cook themselves, and avoid going to the restaurant, which is owned by a capitalist.
Living labour is a direction society is starting to traverse more and more, reducing the power of large capitalists. Setting up a rooftop solar panel system is currently expensive, although it pays for itself eventually. The panels are becoming cheaper, and it is probably no accident it is China, with “ one country, two systems” that produce 80% of the solar panels.
A more self-sufficient lifestyle, with labour for one’s self and family, combined with the cooperatives, restricts capitalists from total domination.
There was a time in the past all manual labour was considered to be something to be avoided. We see this today as luxury cars, for instance, are equipped with a driverless system. Even if it was safe, (it will always be like riding a motorcycle), the labour of even driving your own car is unpalatable to the bourgeoisie. Imagine cutting your own wood, or cooking for yourself?
Things are starting to change. Many people have had enough of the monopolies controlling their lifestyles, and are ready to start to do more for themselves. Combined with the knowledge that cooperatives work, the trust’s days may be numbered. Living labour and a changing pattern of ownership, made necessary due to the lack of competition, where WEPCO owns the gas and electricity, produces the commodities, and sets prices, is shifting towards solar generation from home, and other forms of renewable energy..
Socialization of production is occurring in land ownership for agriculture, and production of commodities in the factories. The days of small shops and competition have given way to trusts and monopolies in control of society. A central planning mechanism by capitalists, dictating what and how much to produce, has taken root. Ownership is increasingly in the hands of a few families, who own the shares of joint stock companies, and reap the surplus value. Manual labour is still considered demeaning to the bourgeoisie who own the stocks, but the amount of energy required to produce the lifestyle of luxury looks increasingly ridiculous. A $150 meal for the family at the restaurant, etc. shows the foolishness of our bourgeoisie, whose waste of energy looks much like Roman society’s extravagance towards the end of their rule. Luxury production is mostly this, and this bourgeois is in control of the state. Elon Musk, who produces luxury automobiles; Sheldon Addison, casino owner; contributed more than 350 million dollars to Trump to get reelected. It worked too. The disdain for manual labour could not possibly be more felt than now. Imagine Musk cutting his own wood, or making himself dinner. It’s just not going to happen.
The trajectory of capitalism has not changed, we are just in its late stages. Pressure for a simpler life without luxury production is becoming more socially acceptable. The simplest answer is usually the right one, Occam’s Razor, comes into play. It should be possible to cook a better meal than the restaurant, at a fraction of the cost, and energy usage. When we get over washing the dishes and cooking,, manual labour,, our vision of society changes. Material conditions change, and with it our consciousness. A quest to produce it yourself comes to be.
Try as they may, regardless of the size or sophistication of their latest technology, there is no changing material conditions. Even with all the new weapons, the fact remains the companies are owned by a monopoly, a duopoly, or cartels.
Every crisis consolidates ownership further, as the companies concentrate ownership. Often bought in crisis conditions, for ridiculously low prices, or merged by companies with larger wallets to absorb functioning capital, more and more joint stock companies dominate industry.
It is rare now to have a large company not listed on the stock exchange, the center for trading of joint stock companies. The days of an industry being private property of an individual have basically come to an end.
With this change competition begins to fall behind making surplus value by setting prices due to monopoly. When there are only a few large companies owning, say, electricity and gas, and distributing this gas to consumers on their own lines, it is not hard to see competition come to an end.
Wisconsin Gas and Electric produce all the electricity from power plants here Milwaukee Wisconsin, and also own the lines for transmission of high voltage to Milwaukee. They also own the gas lines, and distribution facilities, including pipelines. There is no alternative source in any sense, and short of cutting your own wood, the houses are all gas burning forced air heating. Solar is still prohibitively expensive, and Wisconsin Gas and Electric do not pay for excess production from solar generation in homes.
This has been building for some time. It is a common feature of industry to become concentrated in a few hands, often in the form of monopolies. They set prices as they control the production facilities, the distribution,the lines etc., and do not practice competition.
The days of competition regulating the price of major commodities is rapidly fading. The grocery stores are now all consolidated into huge markets, dominated by WalMart, Kroger, Albertsons, and Costco. Smaller family owned stores are becoming rare, only for an item or two needed between visits to the big stores. Kroger and Albertsons attempted a merger, which looks like a failure, but would have meant about half of grocery stores would have been controlled by WalMart and Kroger Albertsons combined as one company.
The largest computers cannot stop the consolidation of industry, the growth of joint stock companies and monopoly conditions. It is a built in condition of late capitalism, described by Friedrich Engels in Anti Duhring in the 1890’s; the growth of joint stock companies, and concentration and consolidation of industry. here is a quote
T0″he 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 socialization of great masses of means of production which we meet with in the different type of joint stock companies. Many of these means of production 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 producers on a large scale in a particular branch of 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 the particular industry is turned into a gigantic joint stock company; internal competition gives place to 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 on a single plan, with a capital of &6,000,0000.”
“In the trusts, freedom of competition changes to its very opposite- into monopoly; and the production without any definite plan of capitalistic society capitulates to the production a definite plan of the invading socialistic society. Certainly this is so far still to the benefit 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.”
Anti Duhring First wellread books edition 2017
Part 3 socialism II Theoretical p. 329
Which is optimistic that a society will not tolerate trusts and monopolies, which is precisely what we have learned to do. The important part is trusts and monopoly were recognized by Engels as being the dominant form of capitalism.
This was published in 1890. Vladimir Lenin published Imperialism, the Highest Form of Capitalism, in 1916. Clearly Lenin agreed with Engels, and developed this idea further.
It is all connected, and the presence of these monopolies looks unlikely to change. Internet service is also dominated by two large companies, one of which has been the subject of antitrust activity, American Telephone Telegraph, AT&T. The only choice is Charter, also called Spectrum, and these companies cooperate to keep the price of internet at a set price, by removing, for instance, subsidies by the state to keep the price of internet low for seniors. There is AT&T again controlling prices; last time it was their long distance telephone service, broken up by congress, resulting in the baby Bells.
Computers are dominated by Apple, who produce most often computers used in homes. International Business Machines, IBM, is no longer a competitor of home computers to Apple, who are close to monopoly. Google as the search engine, also a monopoly, caps off much of our computing.
This list could continue, but I think I have made my point. Consolidation and concentration of ownership into joint stock companies, often exerting monopoly power, is a fixture of modern capitalism. Rarely it is addressed as antitrust by capitalists who want to artificially change what is a dominant feature of capitalism, to control the market by monopoly.
Every capitalist wants to drive his competitor out of business. When they are successful at this, they control the market, competition ends, and they then set prices for the commodity they control. It seems to be universal; there are no sectors of the economy left untouched by consolidation of ownership. Breaking them up is only a temporary fix, AT&T for instance is now back to its old self again, in a duopoly of internet service with Charter, as they own the fiber optic cables. Antitrust activity towards AT&T, breaking up the long distance telephone to the baby Bells, did not stop AT&T from again attempting to set prices by control of markets,this time in internet transmission .
This system is a form of capitalism referred to as imperialism in the late 19th century and early 20th century by Friedrich Engels, and later by Vladimir Lenin. It was becoming more obvious then that joint stock companies would dominate capitalism, and consolidation of ownership would only continue.
Names like J Peirpont Morgan, and his domination of 20th century large scale industry, is a case study in the growth of monopolies and trusts. By the early to mid 20th century Morgan’s empire included railroads, Steel production (US Steel), General Electric, AT&T…. Morgan personified the bourgeoisie of the 20th century, with control of markets for just about every large industry.
When the next crisis comes the trend will no doubt continue. Capitalism is at the stage where competition is becoming rare, only lasting a few years in a new industry, until monopoly control and joint stock ownership is achieved. Crisis comes and ownership is consolidated further, the likes of which are a recurrent theme in capitalism. It seems unlikely this will end without leaving capitalism, antitrust does not deter companies from concentration ownership of the means of production (like AT&T) from continuing to exert monopoly power over the industries they own, it just sets them back a decade or so. It is just way too tempting to remove competition by these capitalists , and set prices.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ecological Era 
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