Freedom Socialist Vol. 29, No. 2 April-May 2008Spelling out the ABCs of socialismExcerpts from the article “More Socialism for Skeptics,” in which Fraser outlines the basics of Marxist economics to an imaginary but typical questioner whom Fraser (CF) dubs the “Free Market Champion” (FMC). FMC: Modern economy is too complex to plan. CF: Stop with the mystifying and mystiquing already! With a little work, study and experience, anyone who can manage their own household economy can supervise the flow of money through a business, an entire industry, a government, banking, the stock market, and the compulsive flight of capital around the world. Capital is simply money and commodities assigned to create a profit and be reinvested. And this capital is born to expand or die. To be useful, the investment must result not only in a profit but in a growing rate of profit. The outcome of capitalism is hardly the dramatic and sexy individual entrepreneurship extolled by the financial and journalistic gurus. No, the real end product is world domination ... by a few huge conglomerates who each control a segment of the global market: imperialism. You, too, my critic, should be sufficiently intelligent to grasp the nature and laws of the system you consider incomprehensible. Said Lenin, “Every ruler shall learn to cook and every cook shall learn to rule the state.” Can you cook? Then there’s hope for you. FMC: Market relations aren’t plotted by a group of secret schemers. CF: So who said they were? Much engineering and manipulation and control through pacts goes on, but for the most part, you’re right. It was Marx who pointed out the truly anarchistic nature of modern industrial capitalism — an irrational, disorganized hodge-podge operation that enormously rewards price fixers, crooks, gangsters, exploiters, con artists, gamblers, stock manipulators, and all manner of corruption. ... But the underlying profit system is perpetuated by mostly unknown inand financiers, and the governments they own. FMC: The system is regulated through trade and the prices set by trade. CF: You’re confusing the system and the market. The market is coordinated by trade (what sells and what doesn’t), but the private profit system is perpetuated by those with power and guns. Furthermore, “trade” doesn’t determine basic prices anyway. ... Prices in the marketplace actually fluctuate around the real value inherent in a commodity. The value of a commodity comes from the labor invested in it. ... And the boss’s profits do not come from his smarts or his capital investment or his mark-up, but from the value created by labor — specifically, surplus value. Workers produce a commodity which has more value than what they get paid in wages to keep them functioning. This difference is surplus value, which is the source of capital. The secret of value, the labor theory of value, that was unearthed by the classical economists and Marx is what the money barons fear and hate. It is the secret that will set the world free. People will learn how to control the supposedly sacred, eternal, inscrutable method of production and distribution that now controls us. Socialists will produce for use according to a reasonable plan without a thought for the odious notion of profit. And with no insatiable parasitic class to maintain, socialist society will produce abundance for all. We’ve got the abundance — we just have to transform the way we distribute it. |
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