Unfrequently Asked Questions: Expropriation of Capital?

(source)

 

I must admit that I wrote this post with hesitancy. There are at least two reasons for that.

Firstly, because I was not elected Great Inquisitor and Defender of the Faith by my fellow orthodox Marxists. As readers should know, we members of the All-Powerful Secret Orthodox Marxist Monolith of Fanatical Intransigence are obsessed with repressing a rag tag band of enlightened commentators bravely fighting for the good of humankind against our evil ways. So my self-appointed position is not specially strong: I lack the legitimacy that one such election (particularly a unanimous one, as you would expect from orthodox Marxists) conveys.

Secondly, because, to the relief of the Rebel Alliance dissidents, I have not been put in command of the Death Star and a fleet of Star Destroyers. I haven’t been given a single squad, let alone a legion or a battalion of Stormtroopers – who are themselves notoriously poor shooters anyway – or a red (see?) lightsaber (but I’m still hopeful!). Dammit! So far, I haven’t even been given my scuba tank regulator, to make the grisly, rhythmic, mechanical sound of breathing my position requires: KHOOOOH PUUUHRR.

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Speaking though in an unofficial capacity, I will certainly bear witness that Marxists believe the expropriation of capital (aka the means of production) is a necessary condition for socialism.

Profit, in a capitalist society, comes from selling surplus output, made with the unpaid effort of the workers, who are forced to work for the capitalists because the capitalists, well, own the capital (pace, Yves Smith). To make a living, workers, whatever specific tasks they perform as condition for employment, make money for their employer, money capitalists can then put to other uses. They can re-invest it; they can also buy themselves nice unproductive things: “the power” and “the women” Tony Montana wanted; the social legitimacy Vito Corleone wanted for Mike.

So, orthodox Marxists aren’t overly concerned with the capitalist’s palaces, jets or even multi-million-buck yachts; neither are Marxists obsessed with capitalists' charitable foundations. While all of that is flashy, it is also unproductive in an economic sense. It may come as a shock, but workers don’t work for a capitalist because the capitalist owns a Rolls-Royce Sweptail (price tag last February: US$12.8 Million); rather the capitalist owns a Rolls-Royce Sweptail because the workers work for him/her.

I used to think of that almost as a matter of mundane common sense. Indeed, the idea of the expropriation of capital based on the greater good is not that different from something accepted the world over under different names and with local nuances: eminent domain.

And we take comfort on the fact that Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and a host of other distinguished orthodox Marxists, who often disagreed – believe it or not – with each other on other matters, sometimes of importance, agreed on that.

We are not alone in that understanding either. Eminent economics professor Barkley Rosser – neither a fan of any kind of socialism, nor a friend of Marxists – agrees that for Marx and Engels the key is “who owns the means of production.”

Both Marxists and anti-Marxists base their claims on what Marx wrote. Say, in the Manifesto of the Communist Party (chapter II), we read:

“The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property.”

That sentence seems easy enough to understand – to me anyway. Something like this: Communists have no beef with property in general, only with bourgeois property (like the French revolutionaries had no beef with property in general, but only with feudal property, which they abolished without abolishing other forms of property).

That understanding is reinforced when one sees that idea elaborated later in the same chapter:

“We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others.”

And again:

“In one word, you [i.e. the capitalists who have reproached the Communists with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour] reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.”

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Let’s recap. Marx and Engels wrote that. Marxists explain in plain English its meaning and why it makes sense. Non-Marxists agree that’s what Marx and Engels believed.

 

You would have thought that that makes for a reasonably good argument, yes?

Well, think again – says Carl Beijer. He finds it all unconvincing. Mind you, it all may well be true and Marx may have written that – Beijer concedes – the problem is that Marx didn’t really, really mean it. What he really, really meant – Beijer says – is that all property, without exception, not just capital or the means of production, must be abolished: from the capitalists’ stock market portfolios and real estate to their expensive prescription glasses and the food and champagne inside their fridges and even their humble “toothbrushes” (believe it or not).

Someone has a “reading comprehension” problem – Beijer aptly concludes. Not him, of course. Everybody else, but mainly the orthodox Marxists members of the Monolith.[*]

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With that he joins the pantheon of immortal thinkers whose brilliant insights are bound to revolutionise our understanding of the modern world. Yves Smith argues that capitalists, in the 21st century, do not own the means of production, only what’s left after paying their debts. Her discovery? In earlier times creditors didn’t ask their money back: equity equaled assets, liabilities be damned.

Byung-Chul Han finds that neoliberalism sets workers free by making of them “entrepreneurs of the self” (aka gig economy contractors): “Today, everyone is a self-exploiting worker in their own enterprise”. Something like a self-rape or a self-theft, I suppose.

 

Philip Pilkington (once one of Yves Smith’s protegés) says that Marx was a shabby Hegelian – was Marx a Hegelian??? – because Marx’s understanding of Hegel was not Pilkington’s understanding of Post-Modern historian Michael S. Roth’s understanding of French Hegelian Alexandre Kojève’s understanding of Hegel. You know, “the presence of an absence” … or something. Need I say more?

 

As readers can appreciate, it’s a close contest, but this short anthology of greatest hits would not be complete without a reference to mega-awesome Steve Roth, for his unassailable demonstration that workers must shut up and let rich progressive geniuses like himself do all the talking on their behalf. After all what’s wrong with Stevo making “profits based on the sweat of those employees’ brows?” I mean, do you actually expect him to make his profits based on the sweat of his own serially entrepreneurial brow? Like, really?

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Why can’t people be more like Matt Bruenig?

Note:

[*] Beijer accomplishes something truly remarkable: his misunderstanding manages to be more extreme than the one behind the “inevitability of socialism” myth I wrote about last time: at least those behind the “inevitability” thingy could point to one sentence in a written body of over 50 thick tomes in support of their misinterpretation …