means that unless crises lead to the overthrow of capitalism—which is always a political act—they must always be solved in the bourgeoisie’s favor. Wages that are “too high” are eroded by inflation, until the working-class, exhausted, gives in. Or else “national unity” makes it possible to shift the burden of the crisis onto others’ backs.
For a view of the matter that is not one-sided we need to appreciate that the class struggle proceeds, in the first place, from a given economic situation, reflecting the reality of a particular economic basis, but that, as long as the capitalist system still exists, this modification necessarily remains confined by the laws of economic reproduction of the system. An alteration in wages affects the rate of profit, dictates a type of reaction of the bourgeoisie that is expressed in given rates of “progress” in given directions, changes the social division of labor between the two departments, and so on. But as long as we remain within the setting of capitalism, all these modifications respect the general conditions for capitalist reproduction. In short, the class struggle operates on an economic base and shapes the way this base is transformed within the framework of the immanent laws of the capitalist mode.
The schemata of expanded reproduction illustrate this fundamental law that the value of labor-power is not independent of the level of development of the productive forces. The value of labor-power must rise as the productive forces develop. This is how I understand the “historical element” to which Marx refers when writing of how this value is determined. The only other logical answer to that question is the rigid determination of the value of labor-power by “subsistence” (as in Ricardo, Malthus, and Lassalle).
But this objective necessity does not result spontaneously from the functioning of capitalism. On the contrary, it constantly comes up against the real tendency inherent in capitalism, which runs counter to it. The capitalists are always trying to increase the rate of surplus-value, and this contradictory tendency is what triumphs in the end. This is how I understand what is meant by the “law of accumulation” and the “relative and absolute pauperization” by which it is manifested. Facts show the reality of this law—but on the scale of the world capitalist system, not on that of the imperialist centers considered in isolation; for whereas, at the center, real wages have risen gradually for the past century, parallel with the development of the productive forces, in the periphery the absolute pauperization of the producers exploited by capital has revealed itself in all its brutal reality. But it is there, precisely, that the pro-imperialist tendency among Marxists pulls up short. For it is from that point onward that Marxism becomes subversive. (This problem of the class struggle in relation to accumulation on the world scale will arise again in chapter four.)
Capital overcomes this contradiction by developing a “third department,” the function of which is to take in hand the excess surplus-value, which cannot be absorbed in Departments I and II, owing to the inadequate increase in the real wages of the productive workers. This decisive contribution by Baran and Sweezy has never been and can never be understood by any of those who decline to analyze the immanent contradiction of capitalism in dialectical terms.
Starting in the 1930s, but above all since 1945, capitalism has recorded a gigantic transformation that has borne the share of those activities called “tertiary” to heights previously unknown. The reading of this transformation by conventional economists, including Fourastié who was the first to offer an analysis of it, is uncritical—in fact, apologetic. Ours is not.
Undoubtedly the “tertiary” has always existed, if only because no capitalist society is thinkable without a state, whose monarchical functions have a social cost, covered—outside the market—by taxes. Likewise, indubitably, the expansion of “selling costs” associated with the monopolistic competition referred to previously, along with the relative autonomization of commercial and financial activities, are those things at the origin of the accelerated growth of the “tertiary.” No less important, however, is the expansion of public services (education, health, and social security) produced by successes of the people’s struggles.
So without here going into the labyrinth of the activities called “tertiary”—activities of fundamentally diverse natures—I will here call attention only to the theses that I have put forward concerning the linkage between the puffing up of this “Sector III” of surplus-value absorption and the imperialist fact: the concentration of control operations over the world system by the powers making up the imperialist triad (United States, Europe, and Japan) through what I have termed “five monopolies of the triad’s collective imperialism”.7
Opposed to the strategies of capital, which endeavor to capture control over this swelling of “tertiary” activities through privatization of their management in order to open new fields into which to expand—rather by expropriation than by any new creation—are possible people’s strategies of democratic control of the activities in question.
The dizzying expansion of “Department III” (complementing the Departments I and II of the analysis of accumulation put forth in Das Kapital), which has become de facto “dominant” in the sense that it comprises two-thirds or more of what conventional economics terms GDP (Gross Domestic Product), certainly calls into question the formulations of the law of value that Marx offers us. It is even here that are placed the main arguments in favor of claims that “the law of value is outdated.”
THESIS 4: Capitalism only adapts to the exigencies of the unfolding of struggles and conflicts that form its history at the price of accentuating its character as destroyer of the bases of its wealth—human beings (reduced to the status of labor force/commodity) and nature (reduced in the same way to commodity status). Its first long crisis (begun in 1873) paid off with thirty years of wars and revolutions (1914–1945). Its second (begun in 1971) entered the second, necessarily chaotic, stage of its unfolding with the financial collapse of 2008, bringer of horrors and destructions that henceforth are a menace to the whole human race. Capitalism has become an obsolete social system.8
9. IS THE LAW OF VALUE OUTDATED?
Identification of value as the central axis for critical analysis of the economy of capitalism and thus of its presence, concealed by the workings of its transformation into observed prices, is not without its problems. Marx’s own discussions of these questions invite Marxists not to limit themselves to exegeses of those texts but to dare to go further: in particular concerning (i) concrete labors of diverse character and their reduction to the concept of abstract labor; (ii) the time required for the production, circulation, and realization of surplus-value and, consequently, the relationship between living labor and transferred dead labor; (iii) the identification of use-values; (iv) the treatment of natural resources,whether privately owned or not; (v) the appropriate definition, specific to capitalism, of social labor, and the analysis of its relationship to other forms of labor; and (vi) making clear the forms of absorption of surplus-value by Department III.
The evolution of capitalism since Marx’s day and the gigantic transformations that it has produced challenge Marxist analysis. A perspective that tries to stay critical and even to deepen this radical critique of capitalism requires going far beyond Marx’s answers to the challenges concerning these questions. Certain Marxists, myself included, are trying to face these challenges.9
The current climate of opinion does not favor pursuit of these attempts to enrich Marxism, itself conceived as unbounded in its fundamental critique of the reality of the capitalist world. Instead and in place of enriching Marxist thought, one would rather prefer to bury it and claim to start over from zero. One is then usually the prisoner—whether aware of it or not—of vulgar thought, uncritical by nature. The radical critique of the reduction of the concept of progress to increasing GDP that I have put forward and—in counterpoint—the thesis that I have adopted, likening progress to emancipation, are registered here against the current climate of opinion.10
Current fashion is to say that the law of value is “outmoded.” It would have applied to the industrial manufacturing phase of capitalism, itself made out of date by the formation of contemporary “cognitive capitalism.” Forgotten is that by its essential nature capitalism, today as yesterday, is based on social relationships