Another Remarkably Clueless Philistine attack on the labor theory of value [mim3 comments: The following is a ridiculous piece of philistinism from the RCP=u$A's RosaRL trying to follow up on our trashing of their line on the labor aristocracy and the origin of surplus-value found in the united $tates. It comes from http://awip.proboards23.com/index.cgi?action=displ ay&board=politix&num=1080284384&start=0 My comments come afterwards.] ************************************************ RCP=U$A says: Modern capitalism has stretched outside national borders, and major powers exploit (and divide up) the world. However this does not mean (and has never meant) that they don't exploit workers in their "home countries." And every marxist thinker and leader in the world (from Lenin to Mao to the leaders of todays movements) insist on this -- because it is an important basis of the internationalism between the workers of the world. MIM implies that U.S. workers live off of the labor of people all over the world -- and aren't exploited themselves. It is true that because the U.S. is an imperialist nation -- its economy is more robust, more articulated and rational. The u.s. no longer has a peasantry that is being ruined by capitalism, and flooding as desperate poor into the cities (depressing wages). In the third world there are the extremes of "super exploitation" -- where the existance of semi- feudalism in the countryside allows workers to be exploited BELOW the value of their labor power. However none of this means that tens of millions of workers in the U.S. are not exploited -- (and scientifically speaking, that they are only paid around the "value of their labor power" -- meaning they barely make ends meet.) It is also not true that most of the profit the U.S. capitalists get is from outside the U.S. -- or that it is mainly from the third world. In fact the U.S. ruling class invests about 1.4 trillion overseas every year, and many many times that much domestically. If y ou analyze where it invests overseas -- most of it is in the OTHER IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES. Which just confirms that there are proletarians in those countries to exploit. (And huge amounts of theinvestment of the Japanese, German etc. imperialists is within the U.S. -- exploiting the labor of the multinational u.s. working class). The ratios of this are worth looking at briefly: This is true for the U.S. ruling class -- their investment, and the amount of "profit" extracted within the U.S. is many times more than their investment overseas. Throughout history they have brutally exploited working people within the u.s. -- using the most extreme means (like slavery) and in modern times working millions of people under intense conditions for wages that barely keep body-and-mind together. Clearly, both today and historically, this has involved the special exploitation of Black and Latino people and immigrants -- who are often held at the bottom of the working class, in castelike ways. As imperialism developed in the U.S., there were a number of parallel economic trends -- associated with the export of capital to the third world, the extraction of superprofits from there, and the ability of the U.S. imperialists to develop all kinds of operations in the U.S. that were parasitic (i.e. removed from value creation, like vast banking and speculation, advertising, etc.) International exploitation has become vital to imperialism (for many reasons) -- and expanding their share of that exploitation is a major goal of each imperialist class. However this does not mean (and has never meant) that they are not ROOTED within a national market, where the bulk of their surplus value comes from exploiting the workers there. The notion (in the current book "Empire" that international capital is now rootless and "transnational" refers to important trends and developments, but is essentially false. And, even when you look at the amount of investment and profit, the U.S. ruling class does overseas -- it is mainly concentrated in OTHER IMPERIALIST COUNTRIES not in the third world. (I.e. the exploitation of Japanese workers is very important for the U.S. bourgeoisie -- and is itself a sign of the existance of an exploited working class in Japan. And furthermore, many foreign imperialists put a huge amount of their investment capital in the U.S., to exploit the proletariat there.) If you look at the overseas investment, here are the figures: all countries: 1,381,674 million Investments in other imp countries Europe: 727,793 million Canada: 139,031 million Japan: 64,103 million total: almost a trillion dollars Investments in the third world Latin am: 269,556 million Africa: 2,063 million Middle East: 12,643 million total: almost 300 billion dollars. (Figures are taken form the Department of Commerce, Survey of Current Business from January 2003. The numbers are all for 2001, and are measured in millions of dollars. There are figures there on the INCOME from those investments too, and so on. Profit income does not correspond simply and directly to surplus value -- but the overall ratios are revealing. http://www.bea.doc.gov/bea/ARTICLES/2003/01January /D-Pages/0103DpgG.pdf) Side note: This does not mean that the super exploitation in the third world is not important for imperialism. Thought it just means that the bulk of surplus value in the world does not come from exploiting the workers of the third world. Exploitation in the third world is important because the RATE OF EXPLOITATION is extremely high (because of suppressed wages and other reasons) so the investments by imperialism in those regions increase their global competitiveness with their rivals. (this is a whole discussion, which i have only touched on.) ************************************************* mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement: As usual, to attack the MIM line, the RCP=u$A completely slaughters Marx. Anyone who has read Marx on the distribution of surplus-value knows it is distributed under capitalism according to ownership shares of capital, but that is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE ORIGIN of the surplus-value. Surplus-value can come from anywhere, but capital expects a return wherever it happens to be. Profit in one place does not mean surplus-value was extracted in the same place, not at all, and we would have to have not paid even the slightest attention to Marx to come up with the above from the Reactionary Centrist Philistines. This is also a massacre of Lenin, because Lenin pointed out that finance capital dominated under imperialism. It certainly does not mean that most surplus-value comes from bank workers. In fact, not one bit of surplus-value comes from bank workers according to Marx and Lenin. Following RosaRL of RCP=U$A's philistine logic, investments must be made in banks because there is profit there and therefore surplus-value extracted there. Although such is an objective standard, it is that of social-democrats, not Marx and Lenin. One can open Lenin's "Imperialism" to almost any page and refute RosaRL. In his section on "Finance Capital and the Financial Oligarchy," he says in "Imperialism": "the extraordinarily high rate of profit obtained from the issue of bonds, which is one of the principal functions of finance capital, plays a very important part in the development and consolidation of the financial oligarchy." Now is RosaRL seriously going to tell us that when the imperialists invest in an office building to trade bonds the profits come from exploiting bond- traders?!! RCP=U$A should come out openly and abandon the labor theory of value and be done with it. Philistines! The ratio of investments in the imperialist countries relative to that of the Third World has to do with the fact that capitalists own their capital in the imperialist countries! So what? Ownership of capital is not exploitation! The stocks and bonds are owned in the imperialist country, but the work is done in the Third World. The office buildings are in the imperialist countries, but the farms, mines and factories are in the Third World. According to Lenin in "Imperialism," not only is ownership of capital not the same thing as exploitation or an indication of where exploitation occurs, but also ownership of capital separates into various aspects: "The ownership of capital is separated from the application of capital to production, that money capital is separated from industrial or productive capital, and that the rentier who lives entirely on income obtained from money capital, is separated from the entrepreneur and from all who are directly concerned in the management of capital. Imperialism, or the domination of finance capital, is that highest stage of capitalism in which this separation reaches vast proportions." He also said geographic separation reaches vast proportions. As we have shown before, what RosaRL has done is called assuming that which is to be proved. Pointing to the investments and salaries in the imperialist countries is not proof that the value in those investments, profits and salaries came from those imperialist countries. Leaders of multinational corporations tend to live in Manhattan, Westchester etc. but the value that constitutes their salaries, profits and benefits comes from the Third World. MLPD the German revisionists introduce the same revision of Marx as RCP=U$A. The whole document above proves they at the RCP=u$A do not study Marx on the difference between surplus-value extraction and profit distribution. After production in a factory, only a portion of the surplus-value goes to the factory owner. Another portion goes to sales capitalists and sales workers and yet another portion to banks and a fourth to landlords. With enough factory, mining and agricultural workers in other countries, entire imperialist countries can have no surplus-value extraction at all. RCP=U$A ignored what Lenin said in "Imperialism." Aside from that, it does not occur to these people at RCP=U$A that when Gucci sells a handbag made in China, the profit is made in the Amerikan mall, but the product was not! So this argument that the RCP=U$A makes is terribly nationalist. Capitalists invest where they are going to realize profit, realize surplus-value. Where there are rich people there is profit to be made. Where there is a bourgeoisie shopping that is best of all for retail profits. It does not prove that the place the bourgeoisie shops is where the exploitation happens. They don't grow the lettuce in back of the grocery store. Profit-realization has never been the same thing as where the exploitation is going on and Marx carefully explained how surplus-value is transferred from the productive sector workers to the unproductive sector. All of Capital Vol. IV is about that, but Marx and Engels also published repeatedly on surplus-value distribution before Marx died as well. It's clear enough when we talk about corporate managers operating in u.$. imperialist headquarters, but the same logic applies to everyone living in the u$A with legal working rights. They are all staff in the imperialist headquarters. That's why we only get a lumpen and undocumented exploited people plus some exploited in prisons. That's why it is possible for the sales workers and administration to outnumber the productive sector workers in the united $tates. It is not possible to explain the ratio of unproductive sector workers to productive sector workers in the imperialist countries any other way. It's 2004, but MIM already answered this particular approach in 1997 in several places. The whole argument was addressed right here, but "reading comprehension" is not their strong point over there at the RCP=U$A, if they have a point at all: "If we combine financial with trading services, we have a pretty good idea of what business the imperialists are doing with each other. Such cross-border investment does not prove that the Third World is irrelevant. Since trade and finance do not produce physical wealth themselves, it only proves that the activities of the unproductive and parasitic sectors have been spread around, so that no one imperialist can enjoy parasitic advantages over another, as in the old days of colonialism. "As a percentage of the outward FDI [Foreign Direct Investment-ed.] stock [which means total quantity, not the increase per year-ed.] in services of 11 home countries, the share of finance-related services ranged from 27 to 84 per cent in the first half of the 1980s. That of trade related services for the same countries was, with three exceptions, between 22 and 42 per cent. Similarly, as a proportion of inward FDI stock in services, and both for developed and developing countries, finance-related services and trade- related services together typically account for 50 to 90 per cent." http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mt/imp97/imp97c1 .html The imperialists are cross-investing in each other--making each other business partners. The movement of such investment, much of it speculative, in no way says anything about production. RosaRL's argument is a dream come true for stock brokers, merchants and bankers who previous to RosaRL did not understand the role they played in the economy. RosaRL's line is opposed to the labor theory of value. Wealth comes from labor not from the virility of stock brokers opening offices hither and thither. Now go back and read RosaRL's argument above. Does she tell you anywhere, anywhere at all that those investments are in finance and trade? Does she try to pass it off like there are all these steel and auto workers here being exploited? Yes. In other words she is trying to sneak the banking, stock trading and merchant "workers" into the proletariat. That's why she did not tell you anywhere above that those investments reflect the DECADENCE of imperialism, the fact that it has no where to go but more coupon-clipping as Lenin referred to it. One last point, after all the answers MIM has given regarding what the line means practically speaking, the RCP=U$A still hasn't read any or rebutted any. Avakian is even on record saying the question of exploitation is "academic." This goes to show you exactly what their GOAL is in all their activity. You can read their comments and they go on and on about how you can't measure exploitation; math is no good; statistics is no good. (Did they even crack open Das Kapital or "Imperialism"? If so, where did they get all their hostility to math, facts and statistics?) What it all means is that they do not intend to abolish exploitation. It's not part of their goal. The first point of discussion in revolution has to be the goal of revolution and then the movement/strategy to get there. Otherwise we become Bernstein-style revisionists. It's not surprising that open Menshevik Redstar2000 ends up doing the bulk of defending the RCP=U$A line at http://awip.proboards23.com. The poor quality of the RCP=U$A response sure does give credence to Luis Arce Borja when he says these are cop circles. It's hard to imagine that revisionists would do such a poor job of trying to reference Marx. It's much easier to imagine some cops so distant from Marx that they recently graduated from Police Academy III and are just trying to collect information on the revolutionaries by coming up with this kind of garbage. P.S. If you look around at the web site set up by RCP=U$A fans, you'll see that most of the articles revolve around the psychological reasons the Remarkably Clueless Psychologists can't adjust to the truth. For every fact in there there are 100 ad hominem attacks on MIM and pro-Sakai anarchists. We can just see them if they lived when Lenin wrote "Imperialism." "Oh no, please don't say that about MY country! It would hurt my feelings SO SO MUCH.....! We've still got lots of progress to be made in capitalism, especially with direct investment in my own country!" These are whiners who will never amount to much, never be able to make an objective analysis. They remind me of all the reasons people don't give up smoking or stay on their diets or whatever--all psychology, no facts about smoking. *********************************************** mim3 for the Maoist Internationalist Movement, April 20, 2004: I've been correctly criticized, because the above is too soft on the RCP=U$A. HC123 points out the RCP=U$A used the government statistics on investment, but took an overly narrow view of what to include even as investment. "You shouldn't have let them off so easily with their Really Crappy Politics. Obviously you blew them away by pointing out, quite correctly, that the 'investment' between imperialist countries is mainly a matter of paper-shuffling, an exchange of assets in the non-productive sector (and even the little bit that goes into productive-sector operations such as automobile factories ends up paying the salaries of non-exploited beneficiaries of the surplus-value of others). But you could have argued on their absurd terms as well. Let's add up the real bill for Third World investment. To keep the Third World under its thumb, the United $tates spends $400 billion per year on armaments. (But, wait! Part of that goes to pay the salaries of POOR EXPLOITED US soldiers who are only doing an honest day's workkk in Iraq!) Then there is "foreign aid." And the UN. And the Peace Corps. And we're still tallying up only the United $tates's share. Now, how do those numbers on 'investment' look?" I'll just note what HC123 pointed out about the Pentagon as a PER YEAR investment in domination. The numbers far dwarf anything RCP=U$A is talking about. Obviously, the RCP=U$A view is too simple even in the realm of how imperialist investment really occurs.