Re: Forwarded from Nestor (India)

["Julio Huato" <juliohuato@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nestor writes:

> Lenin used this distinction to build his polemics against Russian populists
> in _The development of capitalism in Russia_. He also made a highly
> appreciative mention of this thesis, claiming that there was more science
> in this discovery than in all bourgeois economy together.

Exactly.  If you read the entire book, you'll notice the WHOLE POINT Lenin 
is trying to make is that capitalism in Russia was perfectly apt to develop 
and that it is better than the available alternative (the already corrupted, 
semi-dissolved peasant community).  He showed that a certain level of 
capitalist development was already there, in spite of all hinders.  I don't 
know how anyone can read that book and not get THAT idea.  Lenin was 
insupportably repetitious.  He said the same thing in 1,000 different ways.

> Any form of capitalism that does not take this specific constitution is a
> capitalism which can operate only as a sucking profit machine, profit that
> is eventually realized in another formation. Thus, it is a form of
> capitalism where the tendency of the rate of profit to fall does not appear
> directly, because the structure displays no lower limit for wages but the
> limit dictated by class struggles. Conversely, the secret disease of
> capitalism, a disease that is built-in with the system, cannot be uprooted
> in central economies, where wages cannot fall below a certain limit without
> jeopardizing the whole building. In this sense, these forms of capitalism
> are a powerful counter-tendency for the TRPF, and any departure from this
> colonial status is a direct attack against CENTRAL capitalism. This
> explains why semicolonial insurgency, and even the attempts to build a
> self-centered capitalism, are so strongly opposed by the bourgeoisies at
> the core. It is an ECONOMIC logics, the logics of the system itself, which
> pits our poorest peasants against Mr. Rockefeller.

If you mean to say that Lenin showed that the collective peasant communities 
were helping depress wages, that is right.  Precisely, since people in these 
communities could "survive" with low wages or no wages at all, then by 
competing with proletarians for jobs, they allowed capitalist farmers to 
lower wages to everyone.  Now, is this a significant and lasting 
counter-tendency to declining profitability in the "core"?  No.  The Russian 
community was deadweight for the proletarians.  Lenin uncovered here the 
reactionary role played by the Russian community.  (No moral judgment 
against Russian peasant communards.)  I doubt that Lenin said that this had 
any real significance in sustaining profitability in rich countries.  
Although I haven't read his book recently, I'm positive he didn't say THIS.  
Of course, one can argue that by keeping the wages low, the Russians can 
produce with lower costs and then export at lower prices the grain to 
Western Europe.  Lower food prices in Europe would be a counter-tendency 
that slows down the decline of profitability.  But then the argument that 
follows would be: Was this a lasting way for Western Europe to keep wages 
low?  I doubt it, but even if it does, you can't lower the cost of 
production and boost productivity systematically in the "core" by keeping 
wages low THIS way.  At best, that's a temporary solution, which lasts for 
as long as the community starves to death.  Look, the community has no 
chance in this reasoning.  How can a permanent counter-tendency be sustained 
this way?  The only permanent, sustainable way to lower food prices in 
Western capitalism is through increases in productivity in agricultural 
production, etc.  This doesn't come from having starved workers.  This comes 
from better technology, etc.  If the communities disappeared, capitalists 
would have to improve production in other ways.  Tell me where, in his book, 
Lenin says this and I'll be glad to concede.

Still, Lenin is not going to decide this for our case.  We need to have a 
sense of the order of magnitude of these things.  It's not sufficient that 
the narrative feels right.  In our times, what are the main factors driving 
food prices down in, say, the US?  The US agriculture is extremely 
productive and it is the most productive producers who set the price.  
Therefore, food prices go down mainly because of technological innovation or 
cheap labor IN the US.  The infra-subsistence wages paid to farm workers in 
the Third World must have a negligible effect.  You can make a case that, in 
the US, low wages paid to farm workers have something to do with it.  (These 
are low wages, but -- still -- several times over the wages paid to 
agro-proletarians or semi-proletarians in Mexico or Central America, 
countries of origin of these low-paid farm workers in the US.)  Let's 
suppose that the saving that comes from paying low wages to farm workers is 
substantial (which I think it is, in some regions more than others) and it 
translates into lower prices of food.  The next question is what percent of 
the average real income of US workers is spent in food?  Back in the 19th 
century, if I'm correct, an economist named Engel showed that, as the real 
income of people increases, the percent of this income that goes to 
necessities (e.g., food and shelter) decreases.  The average real income of 
workers in the US has gone up at the same rate as the growth of productivity 
in the last 50 years.  I could go to www.bls.gov and try and find some 
figures to give myself an idea, but I suspect, that can't be sufficiently 
large to have any significant role in sustaining the overall profitability 
in the US.

Now, capitalism is a curious thing.  In fact, capitalists can and will take 
advantage of almost any situation.  That's their nature.  They are extremely 
adaptive.  So, if you tell me that as capitalism is stuck at a lower stage 
of development in Latin America, opportunistic US, European, and Japanese 
capitalists take advantage, I won't be surprised.  Of course, they will.  
Their brains are programmed to see in any situation an opportunity to 
profit.  Moreover, if you tell me that these particular capitalists, as they 
benefit from the status quo, use their super-profits to bolster the status 
quo and break and make laws, I won't be surprised either.  But you can't say 
this situation benefits the strategic interest of capitalism.  The opposite 
is true.  It is affected strategically by it.  Capitalists can be myopic and 
anti-capitalists, but only individually.  The logic of the system, as a 
whole, ends up forcing them to do what is good for the entire system.

In general, if the super-structure tends to align itself with the capitalist 
structure, these phenomena -- which will always emerge, since the profit 
motive makes people violate laws, twist them, etc. -- will be under the 
constant pressure of a more open capitalist competition and they'll tend to 
be confined to be mere exceptions.  The rule is, capitalism -- as a mode of 
production -- can't benefit in the long run from keeping the productive 
force down artificially in a country or region.  The contrary is true: It 
benefits most from accelerating the growth of the productive force.

> The idea that "capitalism" can revolutionize social relations without
> establishing this concrete link between material production of goods
> directed at the reproduction of means of production and the material
> production of goods directed at the reproduction of direct human producers
> is the kernel of any form of Marxism which, in one way or another,
> dismisses "imperialism" as a _strictly economic_ phenomenon. In this sense,
> it serves unconsciously the purposes of --Mr. Rockefeller. Julio speaks
> Spanish fluently, so I would write down, for him, that "no hay que
> confundir gordura con hinchazón"

I do not consider that "imperialism" is a strictly economic phenomenon.  On 
the contrary, I consider it completely extra-economic.  By this I mean, a 
set of methods that are not based on value or surplus-value production, but 
on sheer force.  How my definition of imperialism and my view of the 
problems facing capitalist reproduction in Latin America or the "Third 
World" can benefit, consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Rockefeller is beyond 
my comprehension.
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