Must the Workers Control Parliament?

[ALB]

No, not all, just the top managers of state industries and the top civil servants, with their bloated salaries like those at the top of the nomenklatura in the old USSR. They must be getting paid more than they're worth (the value of their labour-power) white most state employees won't be.

[robbo203]

DJP wrote:

ALB wrote:

Actually, when they get to Cabinet level it could be said that they are members of the capitalist class in that they do share in the surplus value extracted from the working class

But then wouldn't we have to say that about all those working in the state sector?

 Its a tricky question insofar as unproductive workers – workers who don't produce or generate surplus value under capitalism – are also paid out of surplus value generated by other workers.  Even so, unproductive workers are indispensable to the administration of capitalism. The question then becomes how do you differentiate between unproductive workers and the capitalist class.  Adam refers to the nomenklatura in the Soviet Union which in effect constituted the Soviet capitalist class. I think the way in which one might go about making such a differentiation is by considering what is meant by "ownership"which the capitalist class is meant to exercise in respect of the means of production In the soviet union the capitalists class, the nomenklatura, did not have de jure ownership of these means – there was no legal document which said it was their property.  But then that is also true of capitalists in the west.  There is no legal document which specifically enshrines the rights of western capitalists as a class to enjoy exclusive ownership of the means of production.  This is a sociological matter that has to be explained in sociological terms not legal terms and the Trotskyite tendency to deny the existence of a soviet capitalist class on the grounds that individuals could not legitimately exercise individual ownership of capital – as is the case in the West – shows its penchant for bourgeois legalism rather than Marxian sociological analysis So its de facto ownership we are fundamentally interested in , not de jure ownership.  De facto ownership is inseparable from ultimate control.  If you own something you have ultimate control over the disposal of that irrespective of the legalities of the situation.  Conversely if you exert ultimate control over something you in effect own it Control therefore constitutes the axis along which you can differentiate owners and non owners. As workers we all exercise a modicum of technical control in respect of the duties we are assigned but we do not exercise ultimate control.  Ultimate control is what our employers exercise.  In the Soviet Union, the red capitalists exercised their ultimate control , collectively as a class not as individuals, via their stranglehold on the state machine So there is a spectrum of control – from very little to very considerable, or ultimate, control – and it is along this spectrum that you can assign people to one or other class.  Certainly there is a grey area where one class shades into the other but that does not invalidate the point that most people in the working class are clearly in the working class and most people in the capitalist class are clearly capitalists.  Sociological analysis is concerned with generalisations but it does allow for exceptions to the rule

[ALB]

By coincidence there's a perhaps relevant headline into today's Times:

Quote:

Headhunters target Labour MPs for lucrative public service roles

The news item begins:

Quote:

Labour backbenchers are being headhunted for senior jobs in the public sector, according to MPs. Details of efforts to lure opposition politicians into roles in health, education and other industries emerged after Jamie Reed, Labour MP for Copeland announced his resignation from the Commons on Wednesday [to take a top job in the nuclear power industry].

Is there perhaps also a nomeklatura in Britain of which top executives in the public sector and MPs are part? In any event, I don't think we can say these people are members of the working class. Like State employees generally they are paid out of the surplus value extracted in the productive sector of the economy (as a necessary expense of the capitalist system) but, unlike the vast majority of State employees, are paid bloated salaries a part of which represents a share in surplus value on a par with dividends and interest, i.e. a privileged exploitative income not just a necessary expense.

[Sympo]

DJP wrote:

"Class interests" only make sense on the level of the class as a whole, not on the level of individuals.

Do you know if there are any articles on here that are related to this topic?Also, would you not say that it is in your interest to establish socialism as an individual?

[ALB]

Sympo, here's the supporting statement for an item for discussion, put down by the old Haringey branch, at our 1973 Annual Conference:

Quote:

What is a Capitalist?One of our current pamphlets, The Case for Socialism, outlines a capitalist as follows:“What makes a person a member of the Capitalist class is the fact that he has enough ownership in the form of bonds, stocks and shares to enable him to live without going to work for a wage” (page 11).We suggest, that this traditional definition is inadequate for the following reasons:1. It is not comprehensive enough as it does not include those members of the capitalist class who, as in Russia, do have to work and do not have large amounts of legal property titles.2. It implies that capitalists can only own the means of production as individuals through legal property titles in their own names. But this has been proved historically to be only one form of capitalist ownership. In Russia this has largely taken another form: collective ownership by a group which controls the State and its industries. The common content of both is actual control of access to the means of production (plus preferential treatment in the distribution of the products), whether legally recognised or not. This fact is not reflected in the definition.3. In emphasizing the high income of the capitalists it places their preferential treatment in the distribution of the products above their more basic position with regard to the production of wealth. In fact it makes no reference at all to their function in social production and does not allow for any distinction between the capitalist class and, for instance, a landowning aristocracy whose members also own sufficient wealth so as not to need to work for wages.Any adequate definition of a capitalist must highlight their function in capitalist production (not production as such, mind you, so we are not looking for a technical function: we wouldn’t find one anyway since, from a technical point of view, production is run from top to bottom by the working class).The aim of capitalist production is not (contrary to what we sometimes suggest in our necessarily simplified outdoor propaganda) primarily the consumption of the capitalists any more than it is the consumption of the workers: it is the accumu­lation of capital, as Marx showed in Capita, at the expense of consumption. The function of the capitalist class in the social process of capitalist production is, therefore, to hold back consumption so that the maximum amount of capital can be accumulated. Or, to put it another way, to restrict the consumption of the working class to a minimum compatible with productive efficiency so that the maximum amount of the surplus value they produce can be reinvested as capital. Marx spoke of the capitalists as "personifying capital", saying:"Only as personified capital is the capitalist respectable. As such he shares with the miser the passion for wealth as wealth. But that which in the miser is mere idiosyncrasy, is, in the capitalists, the effect of the social mechanism, of which he is but one of the wheels (emphasis added, Capital, Vol.1, the section on the theory of abstinence).(Marx went on, incidentally, to state quite clearly that he did not regard the aim of capitalist production as the consumption of the capitalist: "So far, therefore, as his actions are a mere function of capital — endowed as capital is, in his person, with consciousness and a will — his own private consumption is a robbery perpetuated on accumulation. .. ").Engels, in the often-quoted passage from his Socialism , Utopian and Scientific used the same formulation when he described the modern State as ''the ideal personi­fication of the total national capital". The implication being, though Engels does not specifically say so, that capital would be personified under State control of industry by those who controlled the State and the key investment decisions.This of course is another way of putting our case that any party or group which takes on the running of capitalism must come into conflict with the working class because it will have to restrict the consumption of the working class in the interests of capital accumulation (not, as we again mistakenly tend to suggest, the personal consumption of the capitalists).Not that every group that, for however short a period and however chosen, presides over the accumulation of capital can be described as a capitalist class; a ruling class has to have some preferential treatment in the distribution of pro­ducts. But what we can say is that any group which, through its control of the State, does "personify capital" over a longish period will tend to become a capitalist class, even if it doesn't get the legal right to draw a property income. This is essentially what happened in Russia after 1917.To sum up, the rise of State capitalism —in Britain as well as Russia —has clearly exposed as inadequate the traditional definition of a Capitalist as a person who has sufficient personal wealth and legal property income not to need to work for wages. It is not so easy, however, to frame an alternative. We offer, for discussion, something along the following lines:“A capitalist is a member of a stable group which over a longish period… .. directs the accumulation of capital/runs capitalism/ personifies capital.”

[Sympo]

ALB wrote:

Sympo, here's the supporting statement for an item for discussion, put down by the old Haringey branch, at our 1973 Annual Conference

Thanks.I believe that I now can see how cabinet members can be seen as members of the capitalist class.However, I have the issue of not fully understanding how, for example, MP Jeremy Corbyn is a member of the working class.If Corbyn, as some in this thread seems to be suggesting, is doing what is know as "unproductive labour", i.e. the labour that does not create new value…then how does Corbyn's wage originate from productive labour? Because it has too do that in order to be counted as unproductive labour, right?In a thread I was told an example of unproductive and productive labour about a waiter and a chef. The waiter is necessary for business as he moves around the meals that were created by the chef.My question is: who is Corbyn's chef?My question may not make any sense. If this is the case I will be slightly embarassed.

[ALB]

Did somebody really say that in a restaurant the chef was an example of a productive worker and a waiter of an unproductive one? If so, that doesm't strike me as correct as transport is part of production (part of fashioning materials that originally came from nature into something useful). Food in the kitchen is no more a finished product than coal at the pithead  — to be useful they need to be transported to where they are going to be used. The non-productive workers in a restaurant will be those who order and arrange to pay for the food that is to be cooked, those who count the money collected from customers, and those who calculate the wages of the chef, the waiters and other staff.Anyway, surplus value is best seen as not just being produced at the level of individual businesses (that's where it's turned into profit) but at the level of the economy as a whole, so that salaries of civil servants (including elected ones like Corbyn) will come out of the surplus value produced by the productive section of the working class as a whole.

[Sympo]

ALB wrote:

"Did somebody really say that in a restaurant the chef was an example of a productive worker and a waiter of an unproductive one?"As far as I have understood it, yes. It's on page 7 of the thread "A few questions regarding economics"."Food in the kitchen is no more a finished product than coal at the pithead  — to be useful they need to be transported to where they are going to be used."So transportation is productive labour?"Anyway, surplus value is best seen as not just being produced at the level of individual businesses (that's where it's turned into profit) but at the level of the economy as a whole, so that salaries of civil servants (including elected ones like Corbyn) will come out of the surplus value produced by the productive section of the working class as a whole."According to the Daily Mirror the average wage in the UK is £26,500. I looked at the average annual wage for a British MP, it's £74,962. That to me sounds kind of bloated for that type of work.

[ALB]

Sympo wrote:

So transportation is productive labour?

Yes, that was what was taught at SPGB economics classes. It is based on what Marx wrote in section 3 on "transport costs" of chapter 6 of Volume 2 of Capital:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch06.htm#3

Quote:

It is not necessary to go here into all the details of the costs of circulation, such as packing, sorting, etc. The general law is that all costs of circulation, which arise only from changes in the forms of commodities do not add to their value. They are merely expenses incurred in the realisation of the value or in its conversion from one form into another. The capital spent to meet those costs (including the labour done under its control) belongs among the faux frais of capitalist production. They must be replaced from the surplus-product and constitute, as far as the entire capitalist class is concerned, a deduction from the surplus-value or surplus-product, just as the time a labourer needs for the purchase of his means of subsistence is lost time. But the costs of transportation play a too important part to pass them by without a few brief remarks. (….)Quantities of products are not increased by transportation. Nor, with a few exceptions, is the possible alteration of their natural qualities, brought about by transportation, an intentional useful effect; it is rather an unavoidable evil. But the use-value of things is materialised only in their consumption, and their consumption may necessitate a change of location of these things, hence may require an additional process of production, in the transport industry. The productive capital invested in this industry imparts value to the transported products, partly by transferring value from the means of transportation, partly by adding value through the labour performed in transport. This last-named increment of value consists, as it does in all capitalist production, of a replacement of wages and of surplus-value.Within each process of production, a great role is played by the change of location of the subject of labour and the required instruments of labour and labour-power — such as cotton trucked from the carding to the spinning room or coal hoisted from the shaft to the surface. The transition of the finished product as finished goods from one independent place of production to another located at a distance shows the same phenomenon, only on a larger scale. The transport of products from one productive establishment to another is furthermore followed by the passage of the finished products from the sphere of production to that of consumption. The product is not ready for consumption until it has completed these movements.

[Young Master Smeet]

Short of time:

Marx wrote:

Whatever may be the social form of the products-supply, its preservation requires outlays for buildings, vessels, etc., which are facilities for storing the product; also for means of production and labour, more or less of which must be expended, according to the nature of the product, in order to combat injurious influences. The more concentrated socially the supply is, the smaller relatively are the costs. These outlays always constitute a part of the social labour, in either materialised or living form — hence in the capitalist form outlays of capital — which do not enter into the formation of the product itself and thus are deductions from the product. They are necessary, these unproductive expenses of social wealth. They are the costs of preserving the social product regardless of whether its existence as an element of the commodity-supply stems merely from the social form of production, hence from the commodity-form and its necessary change of form, or whether we regard the commodity-supply merely as a special form of the supply of products, which is common to all societies, although not in the form of a commodity-supply that form of products-supply belonging in the process of circulation.

 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ch06.htmCabinet Ministers, like directors of Companies can be said to be pensioners of the capitalist class, and to be getting a share of the surplus value: but I think that isn't their ministerial salary, but the deferred payment in form of directorships and speaking tours.  If the ministers had, as in the SU, control of productive wealth, then they would be taking a share of surplus value.

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