The revisionist theory of the productive forces On this page we are going to compile an ongoing list of quotes from the RCP=U$A and its fans that amount to saying technology or capital is class neutral. We will just update this page as we go along. We are starting this list April 17, 2004. [Something revisionists have done since Lenin's day is to claim that technology (not to mention capital) is class neutral. RCP=U$A increasingly takes up that line to defend itself against MIM's criticism. Stalin had to shoot down Bukharin on this point, when Bukharin flip-flopped after Lenin died. Then it was a big issue in the Cultural Revolution, when Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping glorified technology as class neutral.] I. Over at awip.proboard23.com, one RCPer or RCP fan said: "But look at a steel mill, where massive amounts of steel are produced. Workers receive wages. The capitalists accumulate massive amounts of surplus value. "those amounts are especially huge because of the high "organic composition of capital" (I.e. the ratio between variable capital and fixed capital - - i.e. the amount spent on wages vs. the amount spent on machinery). Because the U.S. is a highly mechanized place, with huge developed industries - - the organic composition is high. And so the absolute amount of surplus value extracted (if calculated per worker) is very high (compared to, say, a labor intensive sweatship with only sewing machines as constant capital). "This does not mean that the workers in the highly mechanized steel mill are more revolutionary -- it just means that massive amounts of surplus value can be extracted from them, because of the amounts of investment put into machinery." "If you want to analyse rev potential, you have to look somewhere else, and move beyond this side issue (this pink herring) spread by MIM's mickey- mouse non-analysis." Source: http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?board=politi x&num=1080284384&action=display&start=15 mim3 for MIM replies: The above states that increased use of capital in production automatically increases surplus-value extraction. This is a wrong view thoroughly demolished during the Cultural Revolution. Class struggle matters for starters. Implementation of technology gives the bourgeoisie a chance to increase surplus-value extraction, if there is productive sector work going on. If the bourgeoisie buys technology and the workers effectively strike and do not or from lack of training can not implement it, there is not gain to the capitalists except importantly, ideologically. In point of fact, because of the DECADENCE of imperialism, a company's purchase of technology is usually connected with consumption, not surplus- value extraction. When the company buys a gym for the workers to use, technology goes into that. Likewise, coffee & water machines and company cars with all the gadgets. Yet it is the same purchasing agents of the company and procedures that go into buying cars with air conditioners and CD changers as buys technology for a company. Although economists in Japan are trained in what surplus-value is, it is far from evident that Japanese economists working for companies are directing the company toward surplus-value extraction for the country as a whole rather than profits. We can be sure no such thing goes on in the Anglo-Saxon world. For the capitalists individually in exploiter- majority countries each one is faced with the same going rate of petty-bourgeois demands for gyms at the workplace, company cars with air conditioners etc. Some of that gets added to the capitalists' investment or variable capital costs. When the imperialist partners with his/her own petty- bourgeoisie all that is inevitable, which is why the trend to white-collar workers in India is more interesting. Even in those cases where advanced technology really is applied to the production process in imperialist countries, the majority of the technology expenses goes to pleasing the petty-bourgeoisie and labor aristocracy using the technology. Unfortunately for them, it is next-to- impossible for the imperialists to determine themselves directly what aspects of technology application are really consumption going on in the workplace and entertainment for the thrill of technology itself--a kind of fetishism-- and what is really necessary for surplus-value extraction or realization. Only white-collar "workers" led by the proletariat would have any possibility of the intellectual ferment that would distinguish fetishism from production need. Being caught up in an ideology themselves, imperialists are not apt to want a reduction of "choice" in technological procedures possible in the workplace, all other things being equal. Hence, the imperialists are poorly equipped in actuality to face the class struggle of the labor aristocracy and traditional petty- bourgeoisie. Once the capitalist becomes at all proficient in managing high-technology workers, s/he ships those jobs off to India as the only means to cut back on consumption in the workplace in general. Even there it won't necessarily be the case that capitalists will be able to pinpoint what is going on: they only improve their position of power for class struggle by shipping the jobs to India. In our critics' statement above about steel workers, there is also no statement on WHERE the capital came from, but that is the relevant issue here in the RCPers' thread titled "Where does the U.S. get most of its profit?" where they feebly try to attack the MIM line. Breaking it down to a WHERE question is not always done in Capital, because the initial question was not how the various nations contribute and where the working-class ends and the petty-bourgeoisie begins. Again, because MIM heeded Lenin on the "seal of parasitism" on whole countries, MIM had no choice but to break the question down to WHERE the capital and necessities of life come from. Those following the Hardt & Negri line face no such necessity. We at MIM will only point out that it should be the Trotskyists who go for Hardt & Negri first, the Maoists last. All class conscious people should insist that their leaders break down the question by nation. Misplacing the origins of capital and technology is even a step worse than confusing profit and surplus-value. As Marx said, to introduce "Theories of Surplus-Value": "All economists share the error of examining surplus-value not as such, in its pure form, but in the particular forms of profit and rent." In addition, surplus-value extraction can appear to increase in the imperialist countries because the necessities of life have been cheapened by extraction of surplus- value ORIGINATING in the Third World, especially at a super-exploitive level. It's very, very important to understand what various concepts in Marxism were for what. When you are looking at how surplus-value crosses borders internationally you have to look at various things that might be hidden at first glance. In the above case, and others, because Marx did not handle certain cross-national flows, but just workers as a whole in some examples in Capital, "RCP" feels some justification in acting as if technology were class neutral and that necessities of life become cheaper as if by accident. It comes from a dead reading of Capital not thinking of reality as it exists. Well, sorry, once again RCP=u$A: the lettuce does not just appear automatically behind the grocery store. If the necessities of life get cheaper in the imperialist countries, that may very well be because of surplus-value extracted some where else. The cheapening of the necessities of life and the implementation of technology are never class neutral. II. RosaRL, fan of RCP at: http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=displ ay&board=politix&num=1080284384&start=0 "However the most technologically intensive forms of production tend to remain within the US (and other imperialist nations) in close proximity to the more technically trained workers (education is actually an investment from the perspective of the bourgeoisie). Thus, these jobs tend to be centered around Urban areas where skill levels will be higher." mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement: This common vulgar bourgeois argument says that the labor theory of value should be tossed, because technology deserves a reward. Here chauvinistically RosaRL argues that Western imperialist workers are most advanced and thus deserve the most reward, just as Trotskyists always have. Such an argument again amounts to seeing a reward for technology and capital, not labor. There is nothing in Marxism that says technology, capital or even education is class neutral and not produced with a supply of labor. There is nothing in Marxism that says the workers in the Western imperialist countries "deserve" a return from the capital and technology that happen to exist within the borders of their countries. There is nothing in Marxism that says under socialism, we will nationalize the capital in each country and declare it to be the sole property of the workers who happen to be there. Quite the contrary, after World War II, Stalin saw to reparations from Germany. Again, this has to do with understanding that MIM is making an argument about various nations' workers that some examples we first read about in Capital vol. 1 did not directly handle. Capital is often talking about workers and capitalists as whole classes where MIM is breaking down surplus-value flows by nation and between proletarians and the petty-bourgeoisie. There are two ways out of the difficulty that most of Capital Vol. 1 is about workers in general: 1) is the MIM way to show the cross-border flows of surplus-value, taking the extra trouble to handle the national question and petty-bourgeoisie 2) the other way is the Hardt & Negri Empire way of saying there is one system and bunch of "workers" again, in the whole world. Such an argument prevents our making the labor aristocracy point at the national level. RosaRL's bit above is also a social-democratic argument undercutting Marx's theory of crisis and therefore the possibility of change. If technology infinitely increases surplus-value, then there is no possibility of a profit crisis. It amounts to disguising the decadence of imperialism and attributing infinite life to capitalism. Not surprisingly, in tandem, open Menshevik "Redstar2000" argued that all workers produce surplus-value--an argument by social-democrats undercutting Marx's theory of crisis and change, an argument that says capitalism can go on producing parasites forever. It gets Redstar2000 out of the problem of dealing with the reality of white-collar work in the imperialist countries on a basis any different than that of mine, industry, farm and transport workers-- but it comes at the price of losing Marx's theory of crisis and change. III. Here's another RCP fan quote: "to quote from a bourgeois economics text: "'Several factors influence wages, including the supply of and demand for labor, the value of the products workers produce, and worker productivity. Workers who are productive and who produce highly- valued products will tend to earn higher wages. One of the most important factors in determining wages is the worker’s level of education. The higher the level of education, the more productive the worker tends to be. For this reason, many employers will invest in education and training of their employees, thus raising output and productivity for the firm, and increasing wages and the standard of living for workers.'" But what exactly is this 'productivity'? Once again from bourgeois economics: "Economic productivity is the value of output obtained with one unit of input. For example, if a worker produces in an hour an output of 2 units, whose price is 10$ each, then his productivity is 20$. It is clear that both technological and market elements (as output quantities and prices, respectively) interacts to determine economic productivity." "So here you have in their own terms the fact that worker in the US actually produces more value per hour in general and does so because of the higher level of technology that is employed. It is actually BECAUSE the worker produces more value per hour that he can be paid more per hour for his labor time." http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=displ ay&board=politix&num=1080284384&start=0 mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement: When you get your ideas from a bourgeois economics textbook wholesale, it's time to dissolve the RCP=U$A and focus on "Not In Our Name" and other similar organizations. The "RCP=U$A" is composed of those who know nothing of Marxism combined with the cynics who lead them. Marx said, "All economists share the error of examining surplus-value not as such, in its pure form, but in the particular forms of profit and rent." Even if higher pay is a result of higher technology, that does not prove that the Amerikan workers should be receiving that higher pay. It would not prove that technology is not the result of surplus-value extracted from the Third World. Capitalists also may receive higher profits from implementing technology. That does not mean we Marxists are going to endorse a profit for capital. On a more sophisticated level not even mentioned above, you cannot take the bourgeoisie's notion of revenue at face value and say that the marginal input of labor is equal to the value taken from the laborer as measured by the marginal increase in revenue. We have long ago left an age when necessities of life and variable capital come from just one nationality's workers. There is no choice but to make a crude Trotskyist global analysis of simultaneous revolution or a MIM analysis that takes account of the complexities of nation and imperialism. The labor productivity as measured by the bourgeoisie CAN appear higher for imperialist country workers--even given a same dollar value of fixed capital used--because imperialist country workers are the last stage before the product reaches market. In point of fact, cross-national studies of labor productivity do NOT show what the RCP fan is saying. Quite the contrary, the labor productivity studies show that Mexican workers for instance are awarded a small share of their marginal output relative to Amerikan workers. The facts on that are in MIM's book on the class structure in 1997. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/imp97/index.h tml There is little exported to China by Amerikan workers, because the market and excitement for capitalists is the u.$. market and similar but smaller majority-exploiter countries. Whatever hidden surplus-value is in a product has a chance of becoming apparent when it is sold in the u$a. It does not mean the guard, stock-broker or even the Amerikan floor manager contributed any value to the product. Surplus-value is hidden even in inputs used in Amerikan factories, because 1) multinational corporations use internal "transfer pricing" to avoid taxes, also known as "funny money" to pay for inputs from their own Third World subsidiaries. 2) many products bought from the Third World do not come from a merely exploitive but super-exploitive situations which arise from a non-competitive business practice that drives wages below the level of sustenance. In such non-competitive, coercive situations, more surplus-value is hidden than in a free-market situation of exploitation. If you've never heard of bribery or tax evasion, you don't know why multinational corporations put the value of certain inputs on the books incorrectly. However, Mao said there was such a thing as a "comprador." And MIM believes that these puppet-lackey compradors dominate most of the Third World on behalf of imperialism. In contrast, RCPers and their fans tend to imply that imperialism is still progressive--bringing technological progress and increasing the labor productivity of imperialist country workers. The view that imperialism brings technological progress, advance in the workers of imperialist countries and ever-greater production of surplus- value is an objective possibility to consider. All thinking people should consider it. It's just that we do not associate such views with Lenin and Mao, but Trotsky, who said imperialism's workers are most advanced and bring progress to the Third World. Linking technology to an increase in imperialist country surplus-value is particularly deadly to Leninism and is more befitting of business pulp authors some of which till 2001 said we won't see another recession for generations. ************************************************ Karl Marx: Commenting on Herr List justifying the German bourgeoisie's push for tariffs: "is an infamous hypocrisy and idealistic eye-wash (embellishment), when in relation to other nations it looks down contemptuously on the bad 'materialism' of 'exchange values,' and is itself ostensibly only concerned with 'productive forces'? Furthermore, if the conditions of capital, land rent, etc., can be 'established' without taking the 'political conditions' of the nations into account, what does this prove but that the industrial capitalist and the recipient of land rent are guided in their actions in real life by profit, exchange values, and not by considerations about 'political conditions' and 'productive forces,' and that their talk about civilisation and productive forces is only an embellishment of narrow-minded egoistic tendencies?" . . . "The Saint-Simon school has given us an instructive example of what it leads to if the productive force that industry creates unconsciously and against its will is put to the credit of present-day industry and the two are confused: industry and the forces which industry brings into being unconsciously and without its will, but which will only become human forces, man’s power, when industry is abolished. This is as much an absurdity as if the bourgeois wanted to take the credit for his industry creating the proletariat, and in the shape of the proletariat the power of a new world order. The forces of nature and the social forces which industry brings into being (conjures up), stand in the same relation to it as the proletariat. Today they are still the slaves of the bourgeois, and in them he sees nothing but the instruments (the bearers) of his dirty (selfish) lust for profit; tomorrow they will break their chains and reveal themselves as the bearers of human development which will blow him sky-high together with his industry, which assumes the dirty outer shell — which he regards as its essence — only until the human kernel has gained sufficient strength to burst this shell and appear in its own shape. Tomorrow they will burst the chains by which the bourgeois separates them from man and so distorts (transforms) them from a real social bond into fetters of society. . . . "If the 'School' made no 'scientific elaboration'[110] of the theory of productive forces alongside and separately from the theory of exchange values, it acted in this way because such a separation is an arbitrary abstraction, because it is impossible and cannot go beyond general phrases. "5) 'The causes of wealth are something quite different from wealth itself. The force capable of creating wealth is infinitely more important than wealth itself' [List, op. cit., p. 201]. "Productive force appears as an entity infinitely superior to exchange value. This force claims the position of inner essence, whereas exchange value claims that of a transient phenomenon. The force appears as infinite, exchange value as finite, the former as non-material, the latter as material — and we find all these antitheses in Herr List. Hence the supernatural world of forces takes the place of the material world of exchange values. Whereas the baseness of a nation sacrificing itself for exchange values, of people being sacrificed for things, is quite obvious, forces, on the other hand, appear to be independent spiritual essences — phantoms — and pure personifications, deities, and after all one may very well demand of the German people that it should sacrifice the bad exchange values for phantoms! An exchange value, money, always seems to be an external aim, but productive force seems to be an aim which arises from my very nature, a self-aim. Thus, what I sacrifice in the form of exchange values is something external to me; what I gain in the form of productive forces is my self-acquisition. — That is how it seems if one is satisfied with a word or, like an idealising German, does not worry about the dirty reality which lies behind this grandiloquent word. "In order to destroy the mystical radiance which transfigures 'productive force,' one has only to consult any book of statistics. There one reads about water-power, steam-power, manpower, horse- power. All these are 'productive forces.' Is it a high appreciation of man for him to figure as a 'force' alongside horses, steam and water?" Source: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/03/list.htm#03 The above quote from Marx is about Herr List's particular version of the "theory of the productive forces." His version says that tariffs are necessary on behalf of the god of the theory of the productive forces. According to the RCP=U$A, adding capital to production also has mystical power. Not surprisingly, as the days of Marx and Herr List, anyone not exalting the power of u.$. imperialist productive forces today finds him/herself immediately accused of paying attention to exchange-value. For Marx, the last note in the quote above says that horses and oxen do not count as "labor" in the labor theory of value. As far as the RCP=U$A line goes, horses and oxen should count along with the latest technological fetishes. The polemic against List also has many other elements applicable to the RCP=U$A. Among them is Marx's condemnation of subjectivism. He explains that the "spirituality" (a.k.a. "myth" or "desires" for the RCP=U$A) is really a cover for something else. "It proves to us that his idealism in practice is nothing but the unscrupulous, unthinking disguise of a repulsive materialism." With regard to the RCP=U$A's constant reference to subjective states of mind such as "pessimism" of party members, Marx said this about List: "It can never occur to Herr List that the real organisation of society is a soulless materialism, an individual spiritualism, individualism. It can never occur to him that the political economists have only given this social state of affairs a corresponding theoretical expression. Otherwise, he would have to direct his criticism against the present organisation of society instead of against the political economists. He accuses them of not having found any embellishing expression for a cheerless reality. Hence he wants to leave this reality everywhere just as it is and only change the expression of it." ***************************************** mim3@mim.org adds, May 18, 2004: I'm going to add on some more productive forces type argument from the RCP=U$A fans. Kasama, RCP=U$A fan says: "There is a tendency within capitalism to drive down the cost of labor (i.e. wages) to the "socially necessary value of the reproduction of labor power." Meaning that within the labor market, the competition of capitals leads them to seek the cheapest labor -- and that means forcing workers (whenever possible) to accept pay that is roughly equal to "bare nessessities" (i.e. a hand to mouth existance, where they make it back to work, and raise their kids.) "If they can, they pay below that. In many third world countries, for example, kids are raised in semi-feoudal areas by relatives raising their own crops, and so their proletarian parents i nthe cities can be hired for less than the cost of raising the next generation -- i.e. less than the socially necessary cost of reproducing labor power. This is called super-exploitation. "In other conditions, where there are restrictions on the availability of labor (labor shortages for example) or a shortage of a particular skill, the capitalists are forced (by market conditions) to pay above the value of labor power (and wages go up.) This is why, for example, highly skilled labor makes higher wages -- in part it is because the cost of reproducing skilled labor is higher, in part it is often due to market shortages in that skilled labor. "On result of the rise of imperialism, is that some sections of the working class were able to win wage concessions to their struggles -- win some basic benefits, and wages that were higher than previously. "Now here is an important distinction: "Part of the reason for this is because of empire - - i.e. the imperialists have reserves in low wage areas (and often make plans to shift their production there over time!) "Part of the reason is that they want to politically stablize their "home countries" -- by coopting the movements of the people, strengthening loyal/reformist forces, and undermining revolutionary forces. "But the fact that some sections of the workers may be paid (for a while, even for decades) over the value of their labor power -- does not mean those workers are literally living OFF OF the labor of the third world. The workers don't become exploiters. They just (mainly) become more stable, and less desperate workers. "This is why: "Let me give a crude example: Say a worker gets(on an average work year) wages equal to X dollars. And then say, that he (on average) produces 20 X dollars in value over that year. The capitalist gets 19 X in surplus value. "OK, then say the workers in that industry struggle for higher wages, and (for various political and strategic reasons) the capitalists decide to throw in some concessions (along with their attacks on that struggle). And so they over a decade double wages. The worker then makes 2X dollars, while perhaps he is producing 20 X dollars in value (or perhaps more with new speedup.) "Notice: the workers may (for the moment!) be making more than the value of their labor power (even, in this case, twice as much). But they are still producting surplus value. They are still being ripped off -- and the wealth that they now get (above the value of their labor power) is not taken from some "other" workers around the world - - but comes from their own labor. They get a larger slice of the value of their own product -- not the rock bottom amount that the capitalists desire." ************************************** marxwascorrect responded to the above already on an ideological plane: Kasama and other RCP=U$A fans have now repeatedly raised this incorrect point once the facts have been exposed that the poorest people in the u$A have luxury consumption well beyond the the necessary means of reproduction. Let's be clear about one thing: none of the above from Kasama is an attack on MIM. It is ALL an attack on Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin who all specifically dealt with this. The RCP=u$A counterrevolutionary argument that you can go on and on with wages as a "worker" above the value of one's labor-power under capitalism was dealt with by Marx. He specifically knocked down this idea in talking about the "theory of productive forces." http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/wyl/crypto/t ext.php?mimfile=rcpproductiveforces.txt What it really is is Kasama singing the praises of capitalism, how it makes such an efficient production above the necessities of life possible. It is an attribution of great mystical powers to capital. As with their attack on the distinction between productive and unproductive labor, the RCP fans kill of the possibility of economic crisis by talking about the great productiveness of capital- -a view completely alien to Marx. Then Kasama talks about the "higher costs of reproducing skilled labor." Lenin warned us countless times about revisionists justifying the higher pay of Western workers. He made it clear they are counterrevolutionary and that communists do not represent the more skilled workers in their demands: "it was by helping their 'own' bourgeoisie to conquer and strangle the whole world by imperialist methods, with the aim of thereby ensuring better pay for themselves, that the labor aristocracy developed. If the German workers now want to work for the revolution they must make sacrifices, and not be afraid to do so." Read that Crispien, er, Kasama: Lenin says "sacrifices," not justifications for higher wages like what you are doing. Furthermore, you will not find in Marx ANYWHERE that the need for skilled labor justifies higher pay for particular workers of any country. That is just labor aristocracy ideology. Marx's point was only that education is necessary SOMEWHERE and not necessarily at the price the labor aristocracy asks for. In other words, there is no particular reason capitalism has to pay the particular skilled worker above the means of subsistence in order to continue reproducing skilled labor. That is PURELY Kasama's chauvinist invention. In case Kasama did not notice, China and India can provide any skilled labor the imperialists need. They reproduce it at a lot less cost than the u.$. workers, simply because the Chinese and Indian class structures are not dominated by parasitism. The imperialists are in fact reproducing skilled labor by MOVING jobs overseas. That is important to know, but Kasama tries to make this scientific observation of Marx into a justification for higher imperialist country pay. There is no such connection found in Marx, Engels, Lenin or Stalin. *********************************************** MC5 adds: Now let me go into this more, even though, Lenin would have dismissed the above Kasama argument out of hand as representing "skilled workers" and a "theory of the productive forces." I'm going to draw a diagram for the global worker. Zero labor will be at the bottom. Total work per laborer will be at the top. ****************************TOP SUBSISTENCE THIRD WORLD WAGES ************************ZERO When we speak of the world as a whole, we know that THIRD WORLD WAGES are the largest part of the average. Now comes Kasama, and I want to use his 2x and 20x argument as well as I can with a picture. ******************************20x * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *KASAMA WAGES 2 after more parasitism *KASAMA WAGES 1 ********************************** So Kasama says a worker can be both parasitic and exploited just like Avakian always said. In contrast, Lenin said it was not just 1x and 2x but a situation where proletarians were turned into petty-bourgeoisie outright. Because of what Lenin said, we have to calculate out the line between petty-bourgeoisie and proletariat, because as MIM said in "The Monkey, the Grape and the Cucumber," we have the nagging suspicion that Western and Japanese "workers" are the "top section" of the proletariat on a global scale to be converted into the petty-bourgeoisie that Lenin was talking about. Now as marxwascorrect already pointed out, we know Lenin would have dismissed such a diagram as Kasama's out of hand as "counterrevolutionary," because it's the kind of diagram that Western industrial workers use to justify higher wages. So already at a political level, Lenin at the end of his life was dismissing this sort of thing from the Western Europeans in the Comintern. He'd seen it a million times before and sought to cut it off ideologically. With trepidation regarding treading in counterrevolutionary waters, MIM nonetheless humored this approach in the MIM Theory. It is our long experience that when the enemy makes one evil or screwed up argument, many others are connected, so we waded into these counterrevolutionary waters. First, on ideological grounds, the difference between my first diagram and Kasama's diagram should tell us something ideological right away. Kasama is not talking about workers in the world as a whole under capitalism but just U.$. workers and s/he is providing them with justifications. Since Kasama did not take one global working class, s/he did not show us how come the necessities of life could be so low at 1x. How is it possible that 1x is enough to reproduce the "workers" in the imperialist countries? When it suits Kasama's national chauvinist goals, s/he looks at worker averages as a whole. When it suits him/her otherwise, s/he leaves out the oppressed nations. Lenin, Stalin and Mao expected us to break down the question consistently between oppressor and oppressed nation. They would not have wanted us to hide the exploiter status of oppressor nation "workers" with a blur of diagrams of "averages." There are two answers that the difference between the global and Kasama's U.$. diagram have implicit. 1) The necessities of life are 1x because the workers of oppressed nations do a vastly disproportionate share of the productive sector labor for food and clothing. Think Mexican/Aztlan farmers and Chinese textile workers. 1x is so low, because the necessities of life come from super-exploited workers, something that a diagram for the u.$. average alone hides. 2) 20x is so high because capital/technology imparts its contribution to production. Dead labor put into products comes out of capital, but this leaves aside where the capital came from in the first place. In addition, and again, because the necessities of life were taken care of by super-exploited oppressed nation workers, technology arose. That technology is actually the property of the world's oppressed and exploited of the productive sector if we were to think in property terms. The proletariat has no interest in a property system, so we will settle for saying that the dictatorship of the proletariat would not draw a diagram like the above crediting 18x to imperialist country "workers" at the expense of other workers. Workers as a whole in the productive sector gave rise to technology, not just u.$. workers. Secondly, we should follow the consequences of Kasama's own diagram, because it leaves him between a rock and hard place of his/her own making. If there is 18x surplus-value where is it going? There are only two choices: 1) petty-bourgeoisie and unproductive sector workers 2) capitalists. If there are 30 million workers making 30 dollars an hour in the U.$. productive sector, then that means we can find 18x15 dollars an hour in surplus-value somewhere. That's 8.1 billion dollars an hour times 2000 hours a year, which is 16.2 trillion dollars in surplus-value. Anyone looking at this knows already that it is wrong and too far off to be adjusted, but we can also see why this has to be calculated out to see if we are being handed a load of manure. Capitalists are not raking in that kind of s-v and even combined with the unproductive sector as described by MIM, there is no way to account for that much s-v. So the first question is the TOTAL SURPLUS VALUE implied by Kasama. It helps us to understand why Marx had a theory of SURPLUS-VALUE and not just a theory of profits. Kasama's diagram has no chance of being accurate for the united $tates given its number of "workers" according to Kasama. We have to account for both profits and unproductive sector compensation, but $16.2 trillion is just not possible, because the whole U.$. GNP is less than $11.5 trillion. http://www.bea.gov/bea/dn/dpga.txt In other words, we can put real numbers in for these questions to test it all out. The problem for Kasama is that MIM has already done that and there is no way to change it to 10x or some other number and make it all work out for Kasama's numbers, because this was not the only mathematical situation that his numbers will have to fit for, because Marx told us some other things to be able to slice and dice the question and separate the wheat from the chaff. He gave us a number of angles on the exploitation question and we at MIM are not going to let Kasama just change a couple numbers to 10x or whatever if those same numbers cannot fit into other contexts which we will describe in a minute. Paul Cockshott pushed this question hard enough to see that indeed the majority of England could be supported as unproductive sector workers. Even though we do not agree with how he achieved this result, because we believe it did not do enough to account for international surplus-value flows, the fact is that as Marx instructed, Cockshott did not shirk from calling the majority parasites. On the whole, he had no problem saying England is parasitic. In fact, because Marx had a theory of surplus-value and not just profits, he told us something else, which is that surplus-value has to congeal in certain ratios. Those ratios are determined by capitalist investors who are not going to stand by while one sector extracts or realizes surplus-value as profits while his/her sector does not. If there is an 18x situation like Kasama says, the capitalists are going to jump in to get their share. They are going to line up at the shareholder office to invest and become partners. And after such activity, Marx says the profit rate will equalize across sectors. Capital will pour in where surplus-value is to be divided up and it will leave sectors not realizing surplus-value in a capital outflow situation. So there are some key numbers we have to know: 1) Total s-v going to capitalists. 2) The share of the population that is productive sector workers. 3) The share of the population that is unproductive sector or petty-bourgeoisie. 4) The ratio of capital per worker such that profit rates equalize for each sector of capitalists. 5) Kasama's "18x" or fill in for 18. Ironically, for that last number, higher numbers like 18 point only to more unproductive sector workers, even more parasitism than MIM is saying, simply because the capitalists cannot absorb so much surplus-value themselves. The problem is that the higher you say 5) above is, the more you are going to have to say 3) is above. Only certain numbers can satisfy both 5) and 1) and 3) combined. Within that narrow range of numbers possible for 5) 1) and 3) combined an even narrower range is possible that will satisfy 4). Condition 4) explained by Marx blocks any possibility of saying that U.$. productive sectors are so intensely exploited that they prop up the whole structure with s-v. Thus, it becomes necessary to call on the transfer of value from the Third World productive sector to the imperialist country unproductive sector and adjust the white "worker" s/v situation to be negative. That's the only way the numbers can all fit together. It's also the only way to account for the distinction between oppressor and oppressed nation workers and not hide exploiters in imperialist country averages for "workers." MIM is saying once you plug in the numbers into all the ratios, white "workers" are at -0.5x -1x etc. for 5) above. That can be known from looking at the total profits and discrimination profits situation alone as we explained in MIM Theory #1. When we look at the Third World productive sector in more detail we start to realize what a large share of the u.$. GNP is parasitism.