>In this, Roemer remains in the sphere of ownership, and forgets the sphere of >production. For producing profits material production must be presumed. And for >production, many firms must interact with each other and exchange > material, >means of production, or intermediate commodities. Can coupon work > in these >areas?
>Roemer considers only relation between citizen and firms on the sphere of > ownership and forget the presumption of ownership, in other words, > production. >In capitalist society, wages are determined by the socially necessary amount labor >required for the worker to reproduce himself. But Roemer does not determine the >quantity of coupon citizen receives, nor what is required to receive such coupons - >that is to say, "what is the tradeoff." >In addition, he does not clarify the relation between coupon and regular money. >Roemer conception assumes the wage system. However, in the wage system >workers receive part of the social product in the form of money, not coupons. So if >he wants shares of the social product he must use money, not coupons. Because >coupons do not have imminent value. >One does not exchange his Sachen (commodity, money, and capital---In any > English translation of Capital, Marx original words Sachen and Ding are both > translated into thing but the two are different. Sachen means "property occupied by >people" and Ding means merely "physical matter." This confusion makes it difficult >to understand the fetishism attached to commodity production under capitalist >property relations) with things such as coupons which have no value. > In sum, Roemer's market-socialism only may work on the sphere of ownership, >and other area remains same as capitalist society. >The starting point of modern socialism or communism presupposes collective > revolutionary action aimed at abolishing Sachen and attaining liberty. Roemer >"forgets" this revolutionary action and confine himself to considering phantom >economic system. >In reality, the communist movement is a process embracing various stages > (boundaries)? And under which various economic system may coexist as the > living expression of transition. Marx referred to the unfolding of this process as a >revolutionary transitional period. >Current world can be totally defined transitional period. So as alternative to money, >LET, barter, or other exchange means already are used. Perhaps this is a sign of >radical destruction of civil society. MIYACHI TATSUO (Unauthorized editing and translation by Melvin P.) The "radical destruction of civil society" is understood to mean the processes wherein society is increasingly severed from its foundation in the buying and selling of labor power. An increasing segment of the world working cannot sell their labor-power for enough wages to secure adequate supplies of food, clothing, water, shelter and other means of family reproduction. The source of value is human beings labor - sweat, blood, fiber, energy and daydreams. The nexus of commodity exchange is the amount of socially necessary labor that goes into their production. Profits come from surplus value - unpaid human labor. This value is bound up in and borne by commodities. The commodities must circulate, that is, they must be sold. If not the value in them cannot be realized and the capitalist will not profit from their production. Yet, a vast magnitude of profits is realized (materialized) from activity increasingly separate from the production of commodities and consequently surplus value. This is one side of society being torn from its foundation in the buying and selling of labor and provides the substance of a new qualitative configuration of capital and the working class as a component of capital. Herein resides the antagonism. Herein resides the boundary. An increasing magnitude of the world total social capital cannot be profitably deployed in the production of commodities on a world scale. That is the contradiction or fuller scope of "crisis theory" (quote, unquote, which has only unfolded with the advent of qualitatively new technologies. Human labor is rendered increasingly superfluous to the production of commodities as a fundamental feature of the transition period. At the center of the transition from one mold of production to another is the technological revolution. A measurable qualitative reconfiguration in the organic composition of capital has taken place. The massive growth of capital investing in values mode of expression, distinct from the production process is one such measurement. The transition and growth from the industrial reserve army of unemployed to a more than less mass of proletarians possessing labor-power than cannot be sold to secure necessary means of subsistence is another measurement. The basis for the determination of a new qualitative development in capital and the working class is outline by Marx in Volume 1 of capital. The distinctions on the basis of quantitative and qualitative configuration are Marx words. (Page 628 The General Law of Capitalist Accumulation) "The accumulation of capital, though originally appearing as its quantitative extension only, is effected, as we have seen, under a progressive qualitative change in its composition, under a constant increase of its constant, at the expense of its variable constituent. [13] "The specifically capitalist mode of production, the development of the productive power of labor corresponding to it, and the change thence resulting in the organic composition of capital, do not merely keep pace with the advance of accumulation, or with the growth of social wealth. They develop at a much quicker rate, because mere accumulation, the absolute increase of the total social capital, is accompanied by the centralization of the individual capitals of which that total is made up; and because the change in the technological composition of the additional capital goes hand in hand with a similar change in the technological composition of the original capital. With the advance of accumulation, therefore, the proportion of constant to variable capital changes. If it was originally say 1:1, it now becomes successively 2:1, 3:1, 4:1, 5:1, 7:1, &c., so that, as the capital increases, instead of 1/2 of its total value, only 1/3, 1/4, 1/5, 1/6, 1/8, & c., is transformed into labour-power, and, on the other hand, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6, 7/8 into means of production. Since the demand for labor is determined not by the amount of capital as a whole, but by its variable constituent alone, that demand falls progressively with the increase of the total capital, instead of, as previously assumed, rising in proportion to it. It falls relatively to the magnitude of the total capital, and at an accelerated rate, as this magnitude increases. With the growth of the total capital, its variable constituent or the labor incorporated in it, also does increase, but in a constantly diminishing proportion. The intermediate pauses are shortened, in which accumulation works as simple extension of production, on a given technical basis. It is not merely that an accelerated accumulation of total capital, accelerated in a constantly growing progression, is needed to absorb an additional number of laborers, or even, on account of the constant metamorphosis of old capital, to keep employed those already functioning. In its turn, this increasing accumulation and centralization becomes a source of new changes in the composition of capital, of a more accelerated diminution of its variable, as compared with its constant constituent. This accelerated relative diminution of the variable constituent, that goes along with the accelerated increase of the total capital, and moves more rapidly than this increase, takes the inverse form, at the other pole, of an apparently absolute increase of the laboring population, an increase always moving more rapidly than that of the variable capital or the means of employment. But in fact, it is capitalistic accumulation itself that constantly produces, and produces in the direct ratio of its own energy and extent, a relativity redundant population of laborers, i.e., a population of greater extent than suffices for the average needs of the self-expansion of capital, and therefore a surplus-population. "Considering the social capital in its totality, the movement of its accumulation now causes periodical changes, affecting it more or less as a whole, now distributes its various phases simultaneously over the different spheres of production. In some spheres a change in the composition of capital occurs without increase of its absolute magnitude, as a consequence of simple centralization; in others the absolute growth of capital is connected with absolute diminution of its variable constituent, or of the labour-power absorbed by it; in others again, capital continues growing for a time on its given technical basis, and attracts additional labour-power in proportion to its increase, while at other times it undergoes organic change, and lessens its variable constituent; in all spheres, the increase of the variable part of capital, and therefore of the number of laborers employed by it, is always connected with violent fluctuations and transitory production of surplus-population, whether this takes the more striking form of the repulsion of laborers already employed, or the less evident but not less real form of the more difficult absorption of the additional laboring population through the usual channels. [14] With the magnitude of social capital already functioning, and the degree of its increase, with the extension of the scale of production, and the mass of the laborers set in motion, with the development of the productiveness of their labor, with the greater breadth and fullness of all sources of wealth, there is also an extension of the scale on which greater attraction of laborers by capital is accompanied by their greater repulsion; the rapidity of the change in the organic composition of capital, and in its technical form increases, and an increasing number of spheres of production becomes involved in this change, now simultaneously, now alternately. The laboring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which it itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus-population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. [15] This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits and only in so far as man has not interfered with them. "But if a surplus laboring population is a necessary product of accumulation or of the development of wealth on a capitalist basis, this surplus-population becomes, conversely, the lever of capitalistic accumulation, nay, a condition of existence of the capitalist mode of production. It forms a disposable industrial reserve army, that belongs to capital quite as absolutely as if the latter had bred it at its own cost. Independently of the limits of the actual increase of population, it creates, for the changing needs of the self-expansion of capital, a mass of human material always ready for exploitation. With accumulation, and the development of the productiveness of labor that accompanies it, the power of sudden expansion of capital grows also; it grows, not merely because the elasticity of the capital already functioning increases, not merely because the absolute wealth of society expands, of which capital only forms an elastic part, not merely because credit, under every special stimulus, at once places an unusual part of this wealth at the disposal of production in the form of additional capital; it grows, also, because the technical conditions of the process of production themselves - machinery, means of transport, &c. - now admit of the rapidest transformation of masses of surplus-product into additional means of production. The mass of social wealth, overflowing with the advance of accumulation, and transformable into additional capital, thrusts itself frantically into old branches of production, whose market suddenly expands, or into newly formed branches, such as railways, &c., the need for which grows out of the development of the old ones. In all such cases, there must be the possibility of throwing great masses of men suddenly on the decisive points without injury to the scale of production in other spheres. Overpopulation supplies these masses. The course characteristic of modern industry, viz., a decennial cycle (interrupted by smaller oscillations), of periods of average activity, production at high pressure, crisis and stagnation, depends on the constant formation, the greater or less absorption, and the reformation of the industrial reserve army or surplus-population. In their turn, the varying phases of the industrial cycle recruit the surplus-population, and become one of the most energetic agents of its reproduction. This peculiar course of modem industry, which occurs in no earlier period of human history, was also impossible in the childhood of capitalist production. The composition of capital changed but very slowly. With its accumulation, therefore, they're kept pace, on the whole, a corresponding growth in the demand for labor. Slow as was the advance of accumulation compared with that of more modem times, it found a check in the natural limits of the exploitable laboring population, limits that could only be got rid of by forcible means to be mentioned later. The expansion by fits and starts of the scale of production is the preliminary to its equally sudden contraction; the latter again evokes the former, but the former is impossible without disposable human material, without an increase, in the number of laborers independently of the absolute growth of the population. This increase is effected by the simple process that constantly "sets free" a part of the laborers; by methods, which lessen the number of laborers employed in proportion to the increased production. The whole form of the movement of modem industry depends, therefore, upon the constant transformation of a part of the laboring population into unemployed or half-employed hands. The superficiality of Political Economy shows itself in the fact that it looks upon the expansion and contraction of credit, which is a mere symptom of the periodic changes of the industrial cycle, as their cause. As the heavenly bodies, once thrown into a certain definite motion, always repeat this, so is it with social production as soon as it is once thrown into this movement of alternate expansion and contraction. Effects, in their turn, become causes, and the varying accidents of the whole process, which always reproduces its own conditions, take on the form of periodicity. When this periodicity is once consolidated, even Political Economy then sees that the production of a relative surplus-population - i.e., surplus with regard to the average needs of the self-expansion of capital - is a necessary condition of modern industry. "Suppose," says H. Merivale, formerly Professor of Political Economy at Oxford, subsequently employed in the English Colonial Office, "suppose that, on the occasion of some of these crises, the nation were to rouse itself to the effort of getting rid by emigration of some hundreds of thousands of superfluous arms, what would be the consequence? That, at the first returning demand for labor, there would be a deficiency. However rapid reproduction may be, it takes, at all events, the space of a generation to replace the loss of adult labor. Now, the profits of our manufacturers depend mainly on the power of making' use of the prosperous moment when demand is brisk, and thus compensating themselves for the interval during which it is slack. This power is secured to them only by the command of machinery and of manual labor. They must have hands ready by them, they must be able to increase the activity of their operations when required, and to slacken it again, according to the state of the market, or they cannot possibly maintain that preeminence in the race of competition on which the wealth of the country is founded." [16] Even Malthus recognizes overpopulation as a necessity of modem industry, though, after his narrow fashion, he explains it by the absolute overgrowth of the laboring population, not by their becoming relatively supernumerary. He says: "Prudential habits with regard to marriage, carried to a considerable extent among the laboring class of a country mainly depending upon manufactures and commerce, might injure it.... From the nature of a population, an increase of laborers cannot be brought into market in consequence of a particular demand till after the lapse of 16 or 18 years, and the conversion of revenue into capital, by saving, may take place much more rapidly: a country is always liable to an increase in the quantity of the funds for the maintenance of labor faster than the increase of population." [17] After Political Economy has thus demonstrated the constant production of a relative surplus-population of laborers to be a necessity of capitalistic accumulation, she very aptly, in the guise of an old maid, puts in the mouth of her "beau ideal" of a capitalist the following words addressed to those supernumeraries thrown on the streets by their own creation of additional capital: - "We manufacturers do what we can for you, whilst we are increasing that capital on which you must subsist, and you must do the rest by accommodating your numbers to the means of subsistence." [18] Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of disposable labour-power, which the natural increase of population yields. It requires for its free play an industrial reserve army independent of these natural limits. Up to this point it has been assumed that the increase or diminution of the variable capital corresponds rigidly with the increase or diminution of the number of laborers employed. "The number of laborers commanded by capital may remain the same, or even fall, while the variable capital increases. This is the case if the individual laborer yields more labor, and therefore his wages increase, and this although the price of labor remains the same or even falls, only more slowly than the mass of labor rises. Increase of variable capital, in this case, becomes an index of more labor, but not of more laborers employed. It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labor out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of laborers, if the cost is about the same. In the latter case, the outlay of constant capital increases in proportion to the mass of labor set in action; in the former that increase is much smaller. The more extended the scale of production, the stronger this motive. Its force increases with the accumulation of capital. "We have seen that the development of the capitalist mode of production and of the productive power of labor - at once the cause and effect of accumulation -- enables the capitalist, with the same outlay of variable capital, to set in action more labor by greater exploitation [extensive or intensive) of each individual labour-power. We have further seen that the capitalist buys with the same capital a greater mass of labour-power, as he progressively replaces skilled laborers by less skilled, mature labour-power by immature, male by female, that of adults by that of young persons or children. "On the one hand, therefore, with the progress of accumulation, a larger variable capital sets more labor in action without enlisting more laborers; on the other, a variable capital of the same magnitude sets in action more labor with the same mass of labour-power; and, finally, a greater number of inferior labour-powers by displacement of higher. "The production of a relative surplus-population, or the setting free of laborers, goes on therefore yet more rapidly than the technical revolution of the process of production that accompanies, and is accelerated by, the advance of accumulation; and more rapidly than the corresponding diminution of the variable part of capital as compared with the constant. If the means of production, as they increase in extent and effective power, become to a less extent means of employment of laborers, this state of things is again modified by the fact that in proportion as the productiveness of labor increases, capital increases its supply of labor more quickly than its demand for laborers. The overwork of the employed part of the working-class swells the ranks of the reserve, whilst conversely the greater pressure that the latter by its competition exerts on the former, forces these to submit to overwork and to subjugation under the dictates of capital. The condemnation of one part of the working-class to enforced idleness by the overwork of the other part, and the converse, becomes a means of enriching the individual capitalists, [19] and accelerates at the same time the production of the industrial reserve army on a scale corresponding with the advance of social accumulation." The process of transforming production from value-generating industrial based production to increasingly valueless electronic based production is, like all processes, uneven but steady. The relative surplus population is qualitatively different from in the time of Marx and now appears as a permanent mass of laborers unable to secure the means of family reproduction. A "new class" of laborers dots the landscape from one corner of the earth to the others. The total world productivity infrastructure is socialized production, more than less. There are no more quantitative boundaries within the capitalist system of production, which means the transition to a new mode of production is currently underway. The material power of the productive forces is undergoing revolution. The "chicken comes first" or rather the formation of the "new class," then comes the period of social revolution. This mass is forced to eke out a wretched existence, unable to sell its labor power to secure enough means of subsistence for family reproduction. Thus, when the demand is made to prove that labor is the source of value and profits is derived from surplus value, one must have patience and walk a person through the seven hundred or so year of capital development. Then one must mention the "philosophic" side of Marx approach which use quantitative and qualitative reconfigurations to indicate a transition from one state of "being" to another and under what conditions modes of expressions separate from their point of origin as a signpost on the rode to transition. Melvin P.
