Profit appears under capitalism merely as a category in the ledger
of an individual enterprise. How successful that enterprise will be
in making capitalist profit will depend on the place it has in
relationship to all other enterprises. With the development of
laissez-faire capitalism into monopoly capitalism, the question of
profit became linked with the place of a monopoly or a conglomerate
in relation to others in the national and world economies.
The building of socialism gives an entirely opposite
definition of profit. For the first time, the national economy, and
not an individual enterprise or a monopoly, becomes the measure
whether an enterprise is profitable or not. To what extent the
national economy is profitable has to be determined within a given
span of time according to socialist planning and not on the basis
of the anarchy of production as it exists under capitalism.
For the first time, labor is no longer considered a cost. On
the contrary, the entire national social product belongs to the
working people as a whole in whose interest it is distributed. The
worker is no longer a wage-slave and the constantly rising material
and cultural level of the working people becomes the motive of
production. Distribution of the national social product, that is
all production minus costs, follows the social needs of the economy
according to the overall plan, and the consideration of "to each
according to his ability, to each according to his work."
The question of profit cannot be understood and fully
appreciated without studying the historical economic conditions,
the mode of production and the contradictions inherent in it.
Capitalist profit is *unpaid* labor in a society in which production
is based on the making of the maximum capitalist profit as is the
case in capitalist countries at this time. In such societies, the only
consideration is to make that enterprise most profitable in the
sense of maximum capitalist profit even though it may be extremely
damaging to the national economy as a whole. The production of
armaments is extremely profitable to the owners but is extremely
damaging to the national economy as it produces no value either for
consumption or means of production. At the same time, certain
investments in education, health and social programs may not be
profitable in the capitalist sense but they are extremely
beneficial to the national economy and the raising of the level of
the society.
The question of profit cannot be reduced to a technical
category, a column in a capitalist's ledger. Capital is nothing
more than a social relationship; in the same fashion, the making of
maximum capitalist profit is the reproduction of that social
relationship. The main content of capital is the relationship
between the capitalist owner of the means of production and a human
being who possesses nothing but labor power. The development of
capitalism is the development of this relationship over and over
again in which the rich become richer and the poor poorer with the
entire populace becoming more and more proletarianized.
Capital in a socialist society reflects an opposite
relationship: it reflects on the one hand the relationship of the
working people as a whole, as owners of production, applying their
capital on nature, and on the other hand, the application of their
capital against the capitalist exploiters. Such a relationship in
its development creates the conditions for the elimination of this
relationship altogether, with humanity eventually producing a
community of goods in its own interest.
The question of profit cannot be detached from the character
of capital, which is to say that the issue of profit cannot be
detached from how people derive their living. In capitalist countries,
at this time, people have no say in the economy, politics or culture
because all the main means of production are the preserve of the
capitalist class. The financial oligarchy extracts tribute from the
whole of society while people obtain their living by working for
them, in which they have no say about any matter.
The more capitalist profit is made in capitalist countries, the more
it is damaging to the general interests of the society, as it persists in
recreating the differentiation between the rich and the poor,
between the exploiters and the exploited with capital becoming ever
stronger as it amasses profit. The people are forced to confront
all the ills of capitalism, such as the jobless recovery, that are
reproduced with growing ferocity. The capitalists claim that the
health of individual enterprises will improve the health of the
economy but this has been proven to be altogether wrong. Record
profits in certain sectors of the economy exist side by side with
record levels of unemployment and bankruptcies. It is necessary to
pay special attention to the health of the national economy, while
the monopolies are interested in their own narrow interests
nationally and internationally. "What is the use of a healthy
national economy if my company is not making maximum profit!" they
cry. The health of the national economy cannot be improved without
expropriating the monopoly capitalists and creating social
property.
The capitalists carry on the self-serving propaganda that
without making maximum capitalist profits their enterprises cannot
be kept going. At the same time, they persist in the propaganda
that maximum capitalist profits will provide jobs. In addition,
they repeat the anti-communist dogma denigrating socialist planning
of the economy as if this will convince the working class that job
insecurity, unemployment and poverty are indispensable to their
"wellbeing." Nonetheless, the labor aristocracy, which profits the
most from this state of affairs, does everything possible to
mislead and disorganize the working class so that it does not
awaken and build a society fit for human beings.
The question of profit can be fully appreciated only from the
standpoint of the harmonization of the interests of the individual
with those of the collective, and those of the individual and
collective with the general interests of the society. The demand of
the monopoly capitalists is for maximum capitalist profit at any
cost to individuals, the collectives and the society. If
imperialist war is the most profitable thing there is, so be it,
declares the financial oligarchy. Its responsibility is to itself
and its profitability and everything else be damned. It is
precisely on this issue that the working class must take a stand on
principle. It wants, and should demand and build a national economy
for the benefit of all, one that harmonizes the interests of the
individual with those of the collective, and the interests of the
individuals and collectives with the general interests of the
society. The working class must not support what is damaging to the
national and world economies, even if there are those for whom it
may be extremely profitable.
Shawgi Tell
University at Buffalo
Graduate School of Education
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
