Clause Four Resurfaces
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Following is a discussion on the page titled: Clause Four Resurfaces.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!Corbyn has said he doesn't agree with the old interpretation of clause 4, so we need to deal with his interpretation "I believe in public ownership, but I have never favoured the remote nationalised model that prevailed in the post-war era. Like a majority of the population and a majority of even Tory voters, I want the railways back in public ownership. But public control should mean just that, not simply state control: so we should have passengers, rail workers and government too, co-operatively running the railways to ensure they are run in our interests and not for private profit."
I think an ‘orthodox’ Marxist analysis of state capitalism operating within a mature bourgeois capitalist state is that it can be beneficial to the general capitalist class within it. Even when it is not run for profit. Thus if it is not run at a profit then its products or services are made available at the lower cost of the ‘cost of production’ rather at the ‘higher price of production’. The difference being the surplus value or profit formally expected from the amount of invested capital in the nationalised industries etc. These lower priced ‘products or services’ will then either be purchased with workers wages or purchased by the general capitalists as part of their raw materials or constant capital. Eg energy supply, water, transport etc. The profit that is ‘surrendered’ by the nationalised industries is then transferred to the general national bourgeois class from lower wages and raw materials. Some of these national products and services are all too obviously better run as integrated national monopolies. Or in other words have the potential to be provided at much lower cost as such. Healthcare is one such example; eg in the US per capita expenditure on healthcare is much higher than say in Canada or Europe whilst its quality in general is lower. Producing services and products from national non profit state capitalist industries may work OK providing capitalist from other nations don’t consume the product and have its surplus value transferred to themselves. Or get it on the cheap. Eg their workers skipping over the border for free healthcare or, going in the other direction, workers with ‘invested’ and subsidised education or training skipping off to somewhere else. I think the capitalist class’s objection to nationalisation is often primarily ideological. They have a tendency to view it as ‘creeping socialism’ in the same way as the Corbynites do. I think historically, as in Germany in the late 19th century, the development of state capitalism was often associated with the economic strategic necessity of developing national industries that then demanded massive initial investment. To catch up with other national competitors who had developed theirs incrementally followed later by agglomeration. Before the full development and globalisation of finance capitalism etc. Lenin’s state capitalism was economically modelled on the German example. Does anybody know the history of clause four as in why it wasn’t clause one or nine? It just that a lot of these early 20th century ‘socialist’ were Christians and the then recently rediscovered early Christian document ‘Didache’ had a common ownership thing in its clause four. I am assuming it was just a coincidence? The early Marxist including Karl advocated nationalisation of agricultural production mainly to get rid of the reactionary petty bourgeois peasantry; as little Thatcherite shopkeepers from Grantham. And fast track them into the working class dispossessed of the means of production.
There is another issue as regards not for profit state capitalism as surplus value is always split up into a consumption fund for the capitalist class and accumulation of further capital or re-investment. I suppose a state capitalist industry like the railways could operate without providing a dividend to the capitalist class whilst still extracting surplus value from the workers which would manifest itself as re-investment etc. If it did make a ‘net profit’ I suppose it would go to the government to offset the cost of the administration of capitalism which otherwise would come out of the general capitalists surplus value from other channels. V. I. Lenin Plan of an Article “Commercial Organisation”[4] (ε) Should pay for itself.c + v + ss — accumulation —maintenance of the statehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/oct/x01.htm#fwV42P358F02
I sometimes argued that the Post Office existed to make money for the rest of the economy, much the same as other infrastructure such as roads and freight rail and that is why it should be funded by general taxation. But the powers to be chose to deconstruct the post office into stand-alone separate businesses, ending an integrated and cross-subsidising organisation and impose a requirement that they all make individual profit which meant the social services they offered capitalism was weakened and will eventually disappear. At one time i knew numerous posties who brought basic groceries to the old folk on his walk and sat having a cuppa with the lonely old dears. We were truly part of the community as Postman Pat and his Cat . Now, who knows who pops those letters through the door. I once had a message pinned on the door…"let yourself in and wake me up i got a job interview this morning"…Little did the customer, know i was just the relief covering for the regular one who had gone sick. I lost count of the number of naked people, male and female, who came to the door to sign a recorded or register…"oh its only the postman"…as if we were the same as doctors. Nor was it email and the internet that killed of the mail…Post Office created the model of internet banking with Girobank, it had sorting machinery to do what Amazon now does and it had the road rail and air connections to supply goods as well as mail which the internet shopping get cheaper access with special discount contracts than other business The Post Office was killed off to ensure that capitalism generally didn't make money but just the handful of capitalists to make money like a parasite from all the other capitalists. Thats my defence of Clause 4 i once used to argue for socialised ownership.
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