XIII. Destutt de Tracy's Theory of Reproduction
To this must be added the difference between those lines of business whose production proceeds under otherwise normal conditions continuously on the same scale, and those which apply varying quantities of labour power in different periods of the year, such as agriculture.
XIII. Destutt de Tracy's Theory of Reproduction[56]
Let us illustrate the confused and at the same time boastful thoughtlessness of political economists analysing social reproduction, with the example of the great logician Destutt de Tracy (cf. Buch I, p. 147, Note 30a), whom even Ricardo took seriously and called a VERY DISTINGUISHED WRITER {Principles, p. 333). This "distinguished writer" gives the following explanations concerning the entire process of social reproduction and circulation:
"I will be asked how these industrial entrepreneurs can make such large profits, and whence they can draw them. I reply that it is through their selling everything that they produce at a higher price than it has cost them to produce; and that they sell it,
" 1 ) to one another for the whole part of their consumption destined for the satisfaction of their needs, which they pay with a portion of their profits;
"2) to the wage labourers, both those whom they pay and those paid by the idle capitalists; in this way they draw back from these labourers their total wages, apart from their small savings;
"3) to the idle capitalists, who pay them with the part of their revenue which they have not already given to the labourers directly employed by them; so that all the rent which they annually pay them comes back to them in one or other of these ways" (Destutt de Tracy, Traité de la volonté et de ses effets, Paris, 1826, p. 239).
In other words, the capitalists enrich themselves firstly by mutually getting the best of one another in the exchange of the portion of their surplus value which they set apart for their individual consumption or consume as revenue. For instance, if this portion of their surplus value or of their profits is equal to £400, this sum of £400 is supposed to grow to, say, £500 by each stockholder of the £400 selling his share to another 25% in excess. But since all do the same, the result will be the same as if they had sold to one another at the real values. They merely need £500 in money for the circulation of commodities worth £400, and this would seem to be rather a method of impov-erishing than of enriching themselves since it compels them to keep a large portion of their total wealth unproductively in the useless
361 From Manuscript II.
' English edition: Vol. I, Ch. V (present edition, Vol. 35).
form of circulation media. The whole thing boils down to this, that despite the all-round nominal rise in the price of their commodities the capitalist class has only £400 worth of commodities to divide among themselves for their individual consumption, but that they do one another the favour of circulating £400 worth of commodities by means of a quantity of money which is required to circulate £500 worth of commodities.
And this quite aside from the fact that a "portion of their profits", and therefore in general a supply of commodities in which profit is represented, is here assumed. But Destutt undertook precisely to tell us where those profits come from. The quantity of money required to circulate the profit is a very subordinate question. The quantity of commodities in which the profit is represented seems to have its origin in the circumstance that the capitalists not only sell these commodities to one another, although even this much is quite fine and pro-found, but sell them to one another at prices which are too high. So we now know one source of the enrichment of the capitalists. It is on a par with the secret of the "Entspektor Bräsig" that the great poverty is due to the great pauvreté.
2) The same capitalists furthermore sell
"to the wage labourers, both those whom they pay and those paid by the idle capitalists; in this way they draw back from these labourers their total wages, apart from their small savings".
According to Monsieur Destutt, then, the reflux of the money capital, the form in which the capitalists have advanced wages to the labourers, is the second source of the enrichment of these capitalists.
If therefore the capitalists paid for instance £100 to their labourers as wages and if these same labourers then buy from the same capitalists commodities of this same value, of £100, so that the sum of £100 which the capitalists had advanced as buyers of labour power returns to the capitalists when they sell to the labourers £100 worth of commodities, the capitalists get richer thereby. It would appear to anyone endowed with ordinary common sense that they find themselves once more in possession of their £100, which they owned before this procedure. At the beginning of the procedure they have £100 in money. For these £100 they buy labour power. The labour bought produces for these £100 in money commodities of a value which, so far as we now know, amounts to £100. By selling the £100 worth of commodities to their labourers the capitalists recover £100 in money. The capitalists then have once more £100 in money, and the labourers have £100 worth of commodities which they have themselves produced. It is hard to understand how that can make the capitalists any richer. If the £100 in money did not flow back to them they would first have to pay to the labourers £100 in money for their labour and secondly to give them the product of this labour, £100 worth of articles of consumption, for nothing. The reflux of this money might therefore at best explain why the capitalists do not get poorer by this transaction, but by no means why they get richer by it.
To be sure it is another question how the capitalists come into possession of the £100 in money and why the labourers, instead of producing commodities for their own account, are compelled to exchange their labour power for these £100. But this, for a thinker of Destutt's calibre, is self-explanatory.
Destutt himself is not quite satisfied with the solution. After all, he did not tell us that one gets richer by spending a sum of money, £100, and then taking in again a sum of money amounting to £100; hence, by the reflux of £100 in money, which merely shows why the £100 in money do not get lost. He tells us that the capitalists get richer
"through their selling everything that they produce at a higher price than it has cost them to produce".
Consequently the capitalists must get richer also in their transactions with the labourers by selling to them too dear. Very well!
"They pay wages ... and all this flows back to them through the expenditures of all these people who pay them more" //for the products// "than they cost them" //the capitalists// "in wages" (ibid., p. 240).
In other words, the capitalists pay £100 in wages to the labourers, and then they sell to these labourers their own product at £120, so that they not only recover their £100 but also gain £20? That is impossible. The labourers can pay only with the money which they have received in the form of wages. If they get £100 in wages from the capitalists they can buy only £100 worth, not £120 worth. So this will not work. But there is still another way. The labourers buy from the capitalists commodities for £100, but actually receive commodities worth only £80. Then they are certainly cheated out of £20. And the capitalist has certainly gained £20, because he actually paid for the labour power 20% less than its value, or cut nominal wages 20% by a circuitous route.
The capitalist class would accomplish the same end if it paid the labourers at the start only £80 in wages and afterwards gave them for these £80 in money actually £80 worth of commodities. This seems to be the normal way, considering the class of capitalists as a whole, for according to Monsieur Destutt himself the labouring class must receive a "sufficient wage" (p. 219), since their wages must at least be adequate to maintain their existence and capacity to work, "to proc-ure the barest subsistence" (p. 180). If the labourers do not receive such sufficient wages, that means, according to the same Destutt, "the death of industry" (p. 208), which does not seem therefore to be a way in which the capitalists can get richer. But whatever may be the scale of wages paid by the capitalists to the working class, they have a definite value, e.g., £80. If the capitalist class pays the labourers £80, then it has to supply them with commodities worth £80 for these £80, and the reflux of the £80 does not enrich it. If it pays them £100 in money and sells them £80 worth of commodities for £100, it pays them in money 25% more than their normal wage and supplies them in return with 25% less in commodities.
In other words, the fund from which the capitalist class in general derives its profits is supposedly made up of deductions from the normal wages by paying less than its value for labour power, i.e., less than the value of the means of subsistence required for their normal reproduction as wage labourers. If therefore normal wages were paid, which is supposed to be the case according to Destutt, there could be no profit fund for either the industrial or the idle capitalists.
Hence Monsieur Destutt would be compelled to reduce the entire secret of how the capitalist class gets richer to the following: by a deduction from wages. In that case the other surplus value funds, which he mentions under 1) and 3), would not exist.
Hence in all countries, in which the money wages of the labourers should be reduced to the value of the articles of consumption necessary for their subsistence as a class, there would be no consumption fund and no accumulation fund for the capitalists, and hence also no existence fund for the capitalist class, and hence also no capitalist class. And, according to Destutt, this should be the case in all wealthy and developed countries with an old civilisation, for in them, "in our ancient societies, the fund for the maintenance of wage labourers is ... an almost constant magnitude" (ibid., p. 202).
Even with a deduction from the wages, the capitalist does not enrich himself by first paying the labourer £100 in money and then supplying him with £80 worth of commodities for these £100, thus actually circulating £80 worth of commodities by means of £100, an excess of 25%. The capitalist gets richer by appropriating, besides the surplus value— that portion of the product in which surplus value is represented — 25% ofthat portion of the product which the labourer should receive in the form of wages. The capitalist class would not gain anything by the silly method Destutt conceived. It pays £100 in wages and gives back to the labourer for these £100 £80 worth of his own product. But in the next transaction it must again advance £100 for the same procedure. It would thus be indulging in the useless sport of advancing £100 in money and giving in exchange £80 in commodities, instead of advancing £80 in money and supplying in exchange for it £80 in commodities. That is to say, it would be continually advancing to no purpose a money capital which is 25% in excess ofthat required for the circulation of its variable capital, which is a very peculiar method of getting rich.
3) Finally the capitalist class sells
"to the idle capitalists, who pay them with the part of their revenue which they have not already given to the labourers directly employed by them, so that all the rent which they annually pay them" (the idle ones) "comes back to them in one or other of these ways".
We have seen above that the industrial capitalists
"pay with a portion of their profits the whole part of their consumption destined for the satisfaction of their needs"
Take it, then, that their profits are equal to £200. And let them use up, say, £100 of this in their individual consumption. But the other half = £100 does not belong to them; it belongs to the idle capitalists, i. e., to those who receive the ground rent, and to capitalists who lend money on interest. So they have to pay £100 in money to these people. Let us assume that the latter need £80 of this money for their individual consumption, and £20 for the hire of servants, etc. With those £80 they buy articles of consumption from the industrial capitalists. Thus while these capitalists part with products to the value of £80, they receive back £80 in money, or [4]/[5] of the £100 paid by them to the idle capitalists under the name of rent, interest, etc. Furthermore the servant class, the direct wage labourers of the idle capitalists, have received £20 from their masters. These servants likewise buy articles of consumption from the industrial capitalists to the amount of £20. In this way, while parting with products worth £20, these capitalists have £20 in money come back to them, the last fifth of the £100 which they paid to the idle capitalists for rent, interest, etc.
At the close of the transaction the industrial capitalists have recovered in money the £100 which they remitted to the idle capitalists in payment of rent, interest, etc. But one half of their surplus product = £100 passed meanwhile from their hands into the consumption fund of the idle capitalists.
It is evidently quite superfluous for the question now under discussion to bring in somehow or other the division of the £100 between the idle capitalists and their direct wage labourers. The matter is simple: their rent, interest, in short, their share in the surplus value = £200, is paid to them by the industrial capitalists in money to the amount of £100. With these £100 they buy directly or indirectly articles of consumption from the industrial capitalists. Thus they pay back to them the £100 in money and take from them articles of consumption worth £100.
This completes the reflux of the £100 paid by the industrial capitalists in money to the idle capitalists. Is this reflux of money a means of enriching the industrial capitalists, as Destutt imagines? Before the transaction they had a sum of values amounting to £200, 100 being money and 100 articles of consumption. After the transaction they have only one half of the original sum of values. They have once more the £100 in money, but they have lost the £100 in articles of consumption which have passed into the hands of the idle capitalists. Hence they are poorer by £100 instead of richer by £100. If instead of taking the circuitous route of first paying out £100 in money and then receiving this £100 in money back in payment of articles of consumption worth £100, they had paid rent, interest, etc., directly in the natural form of their products, there would be no £100 in money flowing back to them from the circulation, because they would not have thrown that amount of money into the circulation. Via payment in kind the matter would simply have taken this course: they would keep one half of the surplus product worth £200 for themselves and give the other half to the idle capitalists without any equivalent in return. Even Destutt would not have been tempted to declare this a means of getting richer.
Of course the land and capital borrowed by the industrial capitalists from the idle capitalists and for which they have to pay a portion of their surplus value in the form of ground rent, interest, etc., are profitable for them, for this constitutes one of the conditions of production of commodities in general and ofthat portion of the product which constitutes surplus product or in which surplus value is represented. This profit accrues from the use of the borrowed land and capital, not from the price paid for them. This price rather constitutes a deduction from it. Otherwise one would have to contend that the industrial capitalists would not get richer but poorer, if they were able to keep the other half of their surplus value for themselves instead of having to give it away. This is the confusion which results from mixing up such phenomena of circulation as a reflux of money with the distribution of the product, which is merely promoted by these phenomena of circulation.
And yet the same Destutt is shrewd enough to remark:
"Whence come the revenues of these idle men? Do the revenues not come out of the rent paid to them out of their profits by those who set the capitals of the former to work, i. e., by those who use the funds of the former to pay a labour which produces more than it costs, in a word, the men of industry? It is always necessary to hark back to them to find the source of all wealth. It is these who really feed the wage labourers employed by the former" (p. 246).
So now the payment of this rent, etc., is a deduction from the profit of the men of industry. Before it was a means wherewith they could enrich themselves.
But at least one consolation is left to our Destutt. These good industrialists handle the idle capitalists the same way they have been handling one another and the labourers. They sell them all commodities too dear, for instance, by 20%. Now there are two possibilities. The idlers either have other money resources aside from the £100 which they receive annually from the industrial capitalists, or they have not. In the first case the industrial capitalists sell them commodities worth £100 at a price of, say, £120. Consequently on selling their commodities they recover not only the £100 paid to the idlers but £20 besides, which constitute really new value for them. How does the account look now? They have given away £100 in commodities for nothing, because the £100 in money that they were paid in part for their commodities were their own money. Thus their own commodities have been paid with their own money. Hence they have lost £100. But they have also received an excess of £20 in the price of their commodities over and above their value, which makes £20 to the good. Balance this against the loss of £100, and you still have a loss of £80. Never a plus, always a minus. The cheating practised against the idlers has reduced the loss of the industrial capitalists, but for all that it has not transformed a diminution of their wealth into a means of enrichment. But this method cannot go on indefinitely, for the idlers cannot possibly pay year after year £120 in money if they take in only £100 in money year after year.
There remains the other method: The industrial capitalists sell commodities worth £80 in exchange for the £100 in money they paid to the idlers. In this case, the same as before, they still give away £80 for nothing, in the form of rent, interest, etc. By this fraudulent means the industrial capitalists have reduced their tribute to the idlers, but it still exists nevertheless and the idlers are in a position — according to the same theory proclaiming that prices depend on the good will of the sellers — to demand in the future £120 instead of£100, as formerly, for rent, interest, etc., on their land and capital.
This brilliant analysis is quite worthy of that deep thinker who copies on the one hand from Adam Smith that
"labour is the source of all wealth" (p. 242),
that the industrial capitalists
"employ their capital to pay labour which reproduces it with a profit" (p. 246),
and who concludes on the other hand that these industrial capitalists
"maintain all the others and alone augment the public fortune and create all our means of enjoyment" (p. 242),
that it is not the capitalists who are fed by the labourers, but the labourers who are fed by the capitalists, for the brilliant reason that the money with which the labourers are paid does not remain in their hands, but continually returns to the capitalists in payment of the commodities produced by the labourers.
"All they do is receive with one hand and return with the other. Their consumption must therefore be regarded as having been made by those who hire them" (p. 235).
After this exhaustive analysis of social reproduction and consumption, as being brought about by the circulation of money, Destutt continues:
"This is what perfects this perpetuum mobile of wealth, a movement which, though badly understood" (mal connu, I should say so!), "has justly been named circulation; for it is indeed a circuit and always returns to its point of departure. This is the point where production is consummated" (pp. 239, 240).
Destutt, THAT VERY DISTINGUISHED WRITER, membre de l'Institut de France et de la Société Philosophique de Philadelphie,[63] and in fact to a certain extent a luminary among the vulgar economists, finally requests his readers to admire the wonderful lucidity with which he has presented the course of social process, the flood of light which he has poured over the matter, and is even condescending enough to communicate to his readers, where all this light comes from. This must be read in the original:
"On remarquera, j'espère, combien cette manière de considérer la consommation de nos richesses est concordante avec tout ce que nous avons dit à propos de leur production et de leur distribution, et en même temps quelle clarté elle répand sur toute la marche de la société. D'où viennent cet accord et cette lucidité? De ce que nous avons rencontré la vérité. Cela rappelle l'effet de ces miroirs où les objets se peignent nette-ment et dans leursjustes proportions, quand on est placé dans leur vrai point-de-vue, et où tout paraît confus et désuni, quand on en est trop près ou trop loin" " (pp. 242, 243).
Voilà le crétinisme bourgeois dans toute sa béatitude! (1)
Endnotes
[56] Marx is referring to the following phrase from A. Smith's An Inquiry into the Mature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: "the whole annual produce of the land and labour of every country is, no doubt, ultimately destined for supplying the consumption of its inhabitants" (Vol. II, Book II, Ch. III).—435 57 Marx copied out passages from this book by Senior in one of his Brussels notebooks
[4] State socialism — a bourgeois-reformist and opportunist conception whose adherents reduced the essence of socialism to bourgeois state interference in economics and to a certain degree of regulation of social relations. Among its theoreticians were Louis Blanc (France), Ferdinand Lassalle, Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow (Germany) and others. Armchair socialism (Kathedersozialismus) — a trend in German bourgeois political economy that emerged in Germany at the close of 1860s as a reaction to the growth of the working-class movement and the dissemination within it of the ideas of scientific socialism propounded by Marx and Engels. Under the banner of socialism its exponents (L. Brentano, A. Wagner, W. Zombart and others) preached bourgeois reformism; they asserted that any state, including the German Empire, had a super-class character and that with its help it was possible to achieve a considerable improvement in the condition of the working class through social reforms effected by governments. The armchair socialists called upon the workers to refrain from economic and political revolutionary struggle.— 9
[5] Engels is referring to the letter written by K. Rodbertus to J.Zeller on March 14, 1875. Rodbertus died in 1875 but his letter to Zeller was not published until 1879. A copy of Briefe und Sozialpolitische Aufsätze mentioned below (ed. by R.Meyer, Berlin, 1881), with Engels' remarks, was kept in Marx's personal library.—10
[63] The Institute of France (l'lnstitute de France) — the country's most authoritative centre dealing with the arts and sciences; it comprises a number of leading acade-mies and has existed since 1795. Destutt de Tracy was a member of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques. The Philosophic Society of Philadelphia (la Société Philosophique de Philadel-phie) — one of the oldest scientific societies in the USA, dating back to 1740.— 488