The scope and magnitude of countertrade in the contemporary world economy is
disputed. Citing from the wiki I wrote once some years ago, some GATT officials
suggested that about 5% of the annual value of world trade took the form of
counter trade. The British Department of Trade and Industry has suggested 15%,
while some scholars believe it to be closer to 30%, with East-West trade having
been as high as 50% in some trading sectors of Eastern European and Third World
Countries for some years. A consensus of expert opinions (Okaroafo, 1989) put
the percentage of the value of world trade volumes linked to countertrade
transactions at between 20% to 25%. According to an official US statement, "The
U.S. Government generally views countertrade, including barter, as contrary to
an open, free trading system and, in the long run, not in the interest of the
U.S. business community. However, as a matter of policy the U.S. Government
will not oppose U.S. companies' participation in countertrade arrangements
unless such action could have a negative impact on national security." (Office
of Management and Budget; "Impact of Offsets in Defense-related Exports,"
December, 1985).
Capitalist activity doesn’t even absolutely require commodity production on any
large scale, insofar as capital can accumulate through renting and leasing land
and equipment or other property. Marx for example points out that usury capital
has an “antediluvean” existence (Marx, Cap. Vol. 1, Penguin, 266) and he adds
elsewhere that “Interest-bearing capital, or, to describe it in its archaic
form, usurer's capital, belongs together with its twin brother, merchant's
capital, to the antediluvian forms of capital which long precede the capitalist
mode of production and are to be found in the most diverse socio-economic
formations. Usurer's capital requires nothing more for its existence than that
at least a portion of the products is transformed into commodities and that
money in its various functions develops concurrently with trade in
commodities.“" (Cap. Vol.3, Penguin, p. 728).
Certain Marxists think that they are “super-radical” when they assert that
value and commodity production did not exist before capitalist production, and
say that Marx never talked about simple commodity production. The suggestion
then is, that when capitalist production is overthrown, value and commodity
production will not exist, and inversely that as long as they do exist,
capitalism still exists. It is a nice and tidy, schematic-bureaucratic
black-and-white argument.
But there are plenty of quotations to prove that Marx was well aware – as are
all modern archaeologists - commodity trade existed for thousands of years
before capitalist production emerged. Did the commodities drop out of the air,
then? Marx’s analysis of the value-form is based on the idea that the
value-form had existed for more than 2,000 years (Marx says Aristotle was the
first thinker who tried to analyze the form of value – was antique Greece
capitalist???). How could “simple exchange” (Marx’s term) occur, without the
exchanged products being produced? And if they were produced for simple
exchange, what can that production be, other than simple commodity production?
Needless to say, the “super-radical” blabber-jabber-flubber Marxists have never
produced any credible analysis of the USSR, the PRC, Cuba or any other country
which, according to the bourgeoisie, was not capitalist and therefore
objectionable. With crackpot economics, totally oblivious to the facts of
economic history, you can only make banale rhetorical statements, not cogent,
objective and rigorous analysis of real economies. Why is it important to
mention this controversy at all? Well, since Marxists cannot even agree about
the concept of capitalism and socialism, there is no hope at all, that they can
provide political leadership for a progressive transformation of society. All
they offer is a vague whimper about “inequality” and “oppression”. We are,
quite simply, much better off with a Marx minus the Marxist forgeries and
falsifications. The reason for that is that the real Marx is much closer to the
findings of modern science, than the Marxist forgers.
J.
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