Sermany 1931 1932 Lean Trotsky

PRICE: TWENTY•FIVE SHILLINGS development of this theme, in which he shows, with very intricate analysis, how the illusions about revenues are reinforced by the essential nature of the capitalist system itself (see 'Capital', Vol. III, Chapter XLVIII "The Trinity Formula').

Our main purpose has been only to show that Marx's theory of class, in the one social system-capitalism-for which it was worked out, cannot be deduced from the immediately perceptible relations in social life, but on the contrary must penetrate beneath them to the specific production relations:

..• the specitic economic form, in which unpaid social labour is pumped out of the direct procedures.* In feudal society, landed property entitled its holders to the unpaid surplus labour of the direct producers, but the 'specific economic form' in which this was done was, of course, entirely different from (sIbid, that whereby landed property shares in the total surplus value pumped out of the working class by capital in capitalist society.

In feudal society, a portion of this surplus value was appropriated directly and nakedly in the form of a definite number of days per week or per year spent on the land of the landowner instead of on the land allotted to the serf. Besides this 'labour rent' the landlord would have the right to a definite amount of rent in kind, a proportion of the harvest from the serf's TRANSPARENT own land (often 'commuted' into cash payments).

The exploitation-relation is open, transparent, as contrasted with the apparently free sale of labour power at its value under capitalism.

The theoretical clarification of the distinction between the commodity labour power, bought at its value, and the value created when it is consumed (labour) was a vital stage in the development of the consciousness of the working class, transcending the previous conceptions of bourgeois political economy and sociology.

Marx's treatment of groundrent is a good illustration of his analytical - historical method.

Landed property, its role in modern capitalist economy, its place in the class struggle, etc., must be viewed not as an extension or development of 'landed property' at an earlier (i.e. feudal) stage of social development, but in specific relation to the mode of production within which it now exists, and in relation to the latter's history.

For example, the way in which the old type of landed property and the title it gave to the produce of labour was transformed, and the small proprietors resulting from its reak-up expropriated, is of more importance in this context than the history of that period in which landed property was the dominant form of property in the means of production.

The analysis of ground-rent and the same would go for money, merchant capital, and other categories) in Vol. III of 'Capital' therefore is an expansion of the methodological indications to be found in concentrated form in the posthumously published IntroducPOWER tion to Marx's 'Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy':

'Capital is the all-dominating power of bourgeois society. It must form the starting-point as well as the end and be developed [i.e., in the presentation of the analysis of capitalism, CS.] before land-ownership is...

It would therefore be impractical and wrong to arrange the economic categories in the order in which they were the determining factors in the course of history. The order of sequence is rather determined by the relation which they bear to one another in modern bourgeois society, and which is the exact opposite of what seems to be their natural order or their historical development.

What we are interested in is not the place which economic relations occupy in the historical succession of different forms of society . . . we are interested in their organic connection with modern bourgeois society,' This outline of Marx's theory of the economic basis of classes brings out the essential unity of his historical materialist outlook in one other way, which must be mentioned if only in answer to some of Marx's critics.

In an earlier section of this ("'Marx, 'Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy', Charles H. Kerr & Co. Chicago 1904, pp. 303-304.) landlord originally amounted to two days per week. These two days of enforced labour per week are thereby fixed, are a constant magnitude, legally regulated by prescriptive or written law. But the productivity of the remaining days of of the week, which are at the disposal of the direct producer himself, is a variable magnitude, which must develop in the course of his experience, just as the new wants he acquires, and just as the expansion of the market for his product and the increasing assurance with which he disposes of this portion of his labour-power will spur him on to a greater exertion of his labour-power, whereby it should not be forgotten that the employment of his labour-power is by no means confined to agriculture, but includes rural home industry. The possibility is here presented for definite economic development taking place, of course, upon favourable circumstancés, inborn racial characteristics, etc.'"

(22'Capital", Vol. III, 773-774.)

Saturday July 25, 1970 Tillon PAGE THREE