Sunday, September 22, 2013

Explicit Discussion of Falling Return-on-Capital Rates among Lower Layers of the Capitalist Plutocracy.


Full Title:

Explicit Discussion of Falling Return-on-Capital Rates among Lower Layers of the Capitalist Plutocracy -- Studies in the Late-Emerging Consciousness of Technodepreciationwithin the Wider Ruling Class.

Commentary on Passages from the American Management Associations’ 1974 book Return On Investment --

Undialectical, capitalist perceptions of 'the Historical Dialectic of Capitalist Ascendance ---> Descendance'.




Dear Reader,

This blog-entry contains my commentary on some passages, extracted below, from a book, authored by Robert A. Peters, a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and, as of the time of publication of this book, the comptroller of the Consumer and Technical Products Group of the Owens-Illinois Corporation, Toledo, Ohio.

This book was published by the American Management Association[AMA]s’ AMA-COM [“Committee On Management”] division.  It contains an explicit and direful discussion of a continuing secular fall in the rate of profit on industrial [“manufacturing”] capital -- as it appears in capitalist consciousness and ideology:  as capitalists see it, and compute it -- published in 1974, that is, on the eve of the explicit public visibility of the post-1968, devastating de-industrialization of the Northeast and Midwest regions of U.S. North America, that has since more than decimated so much of the family assets, the per capita income, and the percentage numbers of the U. S. industrial working class, and its formerly “middle class” standard of living.

File:Sectors of US Economy as Percent of GDP 1947-2009.png

Sectors of the U.S. Economy as Percent of U.S.-GDP, 1947-2009*.


This blog-entry is intended to deepen both our extant data, and our extant ‘dis-falsification’, or corroboration, regarding the hypothesis of the ‘techno-depreciation meta-dynamic’ fatal flaw of the capitalist system that we have advanced in this blog. 

In particular, this commentary provides both further empirical data, further elaboration and clarification, and further corroboration of the hypotheses regarding the ‘social forces of production # social relations of production’ intra-duality of human society in general, and of capitalist society specifically, and, within the ‘‘‘social relations of production’’’ side of that primary 'intra-duality' -- i.e., within its CAPITAL-relation side of that primary/universal human-social intra-duality’ -- the ‘capital as self-expanding value # capital as self-contracting value’ subordinate, secondary intra-duality[using the doubly-slashed/doubly-negated equals sign, '#', as our sign for immanent, dialectical, internal, or self-contradiction”, i.e., for intra-duality’ / self-duality].


I both hope and intend that this blog-entry will help you to incrementally advance your understanding of the causation of the content of recent Terran human history, some of which history you may have experienced personally.


Regards,

Miguel











[Peters]:  The subject of this book is not only important -- it is vital...  American industry, collectively, is in trouble, and trends are continuing in the wrong direction.  This is not an idle cry of alarm to attract attention.  It is very real, and very frightening.  The rewards of business have been declining in relation to the investment required to produce these rewards.  We are fast approaching the critical point where prospective rewards will not justify the perpetuation of free enterprise as we know it today.” 

Commentary by M.D.  ¡Yes, you really did just read it:  this is a technical, accountancy servant of the industrial capitalist, lower/wider ruling class, bemoaning the longstanding secular fall in the rate of profit on capital in U.S. industry, and warning that “perpetuation of free enterprise as we know it” is in dire jeopardy due to that fall in the rate of industrial capital profitability!  

Karl Marx, from at least 1857 on, with his discovery of his law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall predicted that the day would come -- ~117 years after Marx predicted it, in this case -- when even capitalists and their servants would find themselves moved, based upon their experiences, to write such words!



[Peters]:  “Chart 1-1 shows that over the past 25 years not only have profits declined in relationship to the equity of shareholders, but, much more important, the return on investment earned by durable goods manufacturers has fallen even more and now can only be classified as marginal." 

“The “return on investment” shown in Chart 1-1 is calculated according to the technique described in Chapter 5 of this book; it is a very real number, directly comparable with the familiar interest rate on savings accounts, bonds, and so on.  But almost any way one puts together data involving profit or cash flow on one side, and some definition of investment on the other, the trend lines point the same way -- down!  These are, of course, averages; some companies have done better, others not so well.  But collectively the industrial bastion of our economic system is being seriously undermined.”



Commentary by M.D.  Capitalists do not compute the rate of profit on capital in the analytically deep and correct way that Marx did, in relation to his presently-socially-necessary-labor-time-value / surplus-value theory of the capitals-system and of its profitability-dynamics, as s’/(c + v), wherein the s’ numerator denotes the output, the net [] surplus-value [“profit”] produced -- net of taxes, rents, interest, insurances, losses, and many other expenses -- by means of their productive use of the (c + v) denominator input.  That denominator, in turn, sums the inputs whose productive uses caused that net output.  The component c denotes the cost of the “constant capital” “invested”, e.g., of the non-surplus-value-producing means of production consumed -- the raw materials used-up in the product, and the plant and equipment, partially consumed by “wear and tear” in their productive use -- in producing the output whose successful sale yields the s’.  The v component denotes "variable capital", the wages-cost of the “labor-power” input, of the ‘power-to-labor’ also consumed in producing what ultimately became that s’ profit:  the cost, paid by the capitalist, of the human muscle, nerve, brain, and bodily and mental human energy input used-up in the process of producing what ultimately yields that same s’ as output.

Thus, in the Marxian analysis, the “wages bill” is part of the capital invested; is part of the capital input to the production of the s’ “profit” / “return” output. 

Capitalist, ideological consciousness, on the contrary, tends to deny the wage-labor source of profit.  It even tends, at times, to fetishistically hold that capital, and only capital, magically -- including in the form of fixed capital plant and equipment, as well as, sometimes, in the form of mere paper titles, which directly produce no output of goods -- is the sole source and cause of profit returns, including that only dead labor [fixed capital plant and equipment, apart from the workers who “work” it] -- never living labor -- produces profit returns. 

Anyway, competition enforces that capitalists act as if such were true.

So the capitalists’ metrics for profitability are typically on the theme of something more like s’/C, whose denominator, here denoted by “Capital”, C, denotes, not c, but the source and opposite of c, of constant capital consumed, namely, C = remaining , not-yet-“circulating, i.e., still “fixed, Capital; ‘‘‘constant capital’’’ not-yet-consumed / -depreciated.

Capitalist profit-rate metrics tend to treat wage-labor cost as a mere “expense”, not as an investment input/cause of profit. 



[Peters]:  “In the late 1940s, business depreciated its assets over an average life of about 20 years.  In recent years, however, book depreciation rates for manufacturers of durable goods now average closer to 15 years.  The significance of this is very great.  Economic obsolescence as a result of advancing technology has a much greater impact than it used to.  And the trend undoubtedly will continue, since the rate of technological progress shows no sign of leveling off.  While cash flows are being stimulated by the increased depreciation, the need to modernize is now demanding reinvestment more quickly than before.  Even with the stimulus given to cash flow by depreciation, total cash flow (profit and depreciation) in relation to investment has declined.  As a consequence, business has been forced to take on additional debt.  Much of this debt has been justified under the banner of expansion, but unfortunately it has in reality resulted from industrys inability to earn enough of a return to provide the capital needed to maintain itself in a viable state. ..."

"From the vantage point of shareholders, cash flow in relation to equity has improved slightly, and acted as a tranquilizer or mask to the aforementioned danger signals.  But this is phony.  The “improvement” is exclusively the result of a sharp increase in the percentage of debt as a part of capitalization. ...  The real problem has been obscured."

"If all this isn’t enough, the persistent inflation of recent years has further aggravated matters.  Today’s profits and cash flows are being measured against yesterday’s costs of assets, which of itself tends to produce an illusion of well-being that is totally unwarranted....  In a few words:  Business desperately needs new tools, for the old ones are leading us down the primrose path.  When returns become insufficient to attract capital, economic stagnation and decay are inevitable.  There isn’t much time left to change direction.”


Commentary by M.D.  In the first paragraph of the three above, Peters begin to address the causation of the profitability predicament that he has been heralding. 

Like Veblen, in the passages commented-upon in another recent-previous blog-entry here -- http://capitalismsfundamentalflaw-wayforward.blogspot.com/2013/08/thorstein-veblens-version-of-marxs-law.html -- Peters attributes the fall in the rate of return on industrial capital that he documents most explicitly to the rising “rate of technological progress”, i.e., to what we term ‘the rising time-rate of technodepreciation, not explicitly, here, also, to the rising “cross-section” of exposure of fixed capital plant and equipment to technodepreciation due to something like what Marx named the [tendentially rising] technical composition of capital in relation to the [tendentially rising] organic composition of capital, and to the tendentially rising c/v ratio, or even to a rising C/v ratio, as their -- imperfect -- quantitative metric. 

Peters’s phrase in that first paragraph that reads “cash flows have been stimulated by increased depreciation” could be taken as an indirect acknowledgement of a rising ‘fixed capital composition of total capital’, if not of the ‘co-causal’ role thereof in rendering the fall in the post-WWII rate of profit, since ~1950, that he notes:  a greater proportion, and mass, of fixed capital to total capital resulting in a greater proportion, and mass, of depreciation “expense”, especially if wear-and-tear, physical depreciation costs are combined with technodepreciation, obsolescence write-offs against gross profits.  

Maybe Peters thought that this rising fixed capital composition is simply, empirically too obvious to need mentioning. 

However, a casual reader might, at this stage in Peters’ argument, attribute this increased depreciation to federal tax law changes that had increased the availability of “accelerated depreciation” expensing methods. 

Moreover, Peters references this increased depreciation in the context of rising “top-line”/numerator cash flows from gross sales, not in the context of falling “bottom-line” net profits. 

So Peters, circa 1974, still falls short of the deeper insights into capitalist profitability-dynamics that Marx achieved circa 1857, ~117 years earlier, in the Grundrisse, although Peter’s is clearer -- or oppositely one-sided -- regarding the profitability-depressing moment of the ‘technodepreciation dynamic’ than Marx often was. 

Marx often emphasized the profit-rate-raising, denominator-impact of ‘technodepreciation’ write-offs, especially for later owners, in later accounting periods, after the earlier owner’s businesses failed due to such ‘technodepreciation’ write-offs / losses.

Marx also thus often de-emphasized the profit-rate-lowering, numerator-impact of such write-offs of ‘“morally-depreciated”’ fixed capital plant and equipment value, when subtracted from gross profits, because that equipment had been retired from production-use “prematurely -- long before its full “wear-and-tear”, ‘‘‘physical depreciation’’’ -- due to its technological, or "moral" [Marx], obsolescence. 



[Peters]:  “In summary, the conclusion is that cash flow provides a better way to get a handle on results than does reported profit.  If depreciation [M.D.:  of “fixed-capital” plant and equipment] were only of nominal influence, this entire discussion would be a tempest in a teapot.  But as business in general has become more capital-intensive, depreciation correspondingly has grown to a very large number.  In heavy industry, it is quite common for book depreciation to equal or exceed reported profits.”


Commentary by M.D.  Here is the nod, from Peters -- almost explicitly -- to the capital composition change ‘co-cause’ of the falling profitability that he has presented, and that Marx emphasized so consistently:  “If depreciation were only of nominal influence, this entire discussion would be a tempest in a teapot.  But as business in general has become more capital-intensive, depreciation correspondingly has grown to a very large number.  In heavy industry, it is quite common for book depreciation to equal or exceed reported profits.  Note, however, that Peter’s emphasis here is on the improved management discernment of actual profitability rates that results from using cash flow in place of reported “profits” for the numerator of his proposed [profit-]Return On Capital Investment [ROI] ratio, not on the causal role of increasing fixed capital composition of total capital in creating a growing ‘‘‘shortage’’’ of profit-"mass" and of profit-rate.



[Peters]:  “We have seen that ROIs for business in total have atrophied over the years to the point of threatening the economic viability of the free enterprise system.  If business, collectively, cannot generate a satisfactory return on its investment, our way of life is in deep trouble. And we are getting close to that point ...”

"...the deteriorating trend of performance in U. S. industry is unmistakable.  Of perhaps more significance, the absolute numbers are now becoming alarming.  Who wants to put their money out to risk in U. S. durable goods manufacturers with returns like these?

[Robert A. Peters, Return On Investment, American Management Associations, AMACOM division, 1974, pp. 1-5, 13, 35, 44, italic, bold, and underline emphasis added by M.D.].  


Commentary by M.D.  Again, in conclusion, Peters sounds the alarm, in dire terms for the interests of -- for the wealth of, and for the 'socio-econo-political' power of -- at the very least, the “outer”, “lower” layers of the capitalist ruling class who he is addressing in this book, in words that Marx essentially foretold over a century ago. 






Global Strategic Hypothesis:  The “innermost”, “highest” layer of the capitalist ruling class became aware of this death dynamic of the capitalist system far earlier, circa the 1880s, and began their counter-offensive, with their engineering of the 1907 'designer depression', to "argue for" their Federal Reserve Act, with their 1913 imposition of that “FederalReserve Act, and of their Federal Income Tax, so as to have deductions from the wages of workers finance the suppression of industrialization / productive forces growth in the capitalist periphery, with their engineering of World War I, and their selling of munitions to all of its sides, with the foundation that World War I laid for the industry-wasting “Military-Industrial Complex” [Eisenhower] to come, with their massive funding of their “Eugenics” ideology, and, facilitated by their engineering of the 1929+ “Global Great Depression I” 'designer depression', their world-wide imposition of Fascist, genocidal [Eugenics] state-capitalist totalitarian dictatorships -- under their, unified, control -- across much of Latin America, Europe, and Asia, until their agenda for global reversal of the historic growth of the human-social forces of production, and therefore also their agenda for global dictatorship, and for global, “Eugenics” multi-genocide, was interrupted, temporarily, when their erstwhile servant-dictator’, Hitler, turned Franken-Dictator’, and then again when Stalinism challenged their global rule, after the Hitler regime's removal by World War II...until they could finally resume that agenda, in earnest, in 1989. 






*Image source(s) [used with permission but not endorsement] --
  • Economic Report of the President: 2011 Report Spreadsheet Tables, B-12. Gross domestic product (GDP) by industry, value added, in current dollars and as a percentage of GDP, 1979-2009, U.S. Government Printing Office [1] (11/25/2011)
  • Economic Report of the President: 2003 Report Spreadsheet Tables, B-12. Gross domestic product by industry, 1959-2001, U.S. Government Printing Office [2] (11/25/2011)
  • Value Added by Industry in Current Dollars, Quantity Indexes by Industry, and Price Indexes by Industry, 1947-1997; Value Added by Industry, Gross Output by Industry, Intermediate Inputs by Industry, and the Components of Value Added by Industry, 1987-1997, Gross-Domestic-Product-(GDP)-by-Industry Data, Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce, [3] (11/25/2011)
  • MERCHANDISE IMPORTS, EXPORTS, AND TRADE BALANCE: 1790-2006 (percent of GDP) [4] (11/27/2011)
Date:   27 November 2011
Source: Own work
Author: Jmk7

Note the precipitous fall in the share of “Total manufacturing” in total U.S.-GDP [broken/dashed blue graph line], in ‘contra-parallel’ with the rise in the GDP share of the “FIREsector -- Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Rental, and Leasing [broken/dashed red graph line] -- with the rise in the GDP share of “Services” --  Professional and Business Services” [solid red graph line] -- with the rise in the GDP share of “Educational services, health care, and social assistance [dotted green graph line], and with the rising foreign trade deficit [solid black line with dot-tics].











SOLUTION

Equitist Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY

 

BOOK:

THE MISSING BLUEPRINTS


Free Download of Book PDF --

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Applications.html

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/Applications_files/Edition%200.,%20DPCAIT_,_Part_1_,_%27THE_MISSING_BLUEPRINTS%27_,_begun_22JUL2022_Last_Updated_18FEB2023.pdf

 

Hardcover Book Order --

http://www.dialectics.info/dialectics/F.E.D._Press.html















Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Fundamental Hypothesis Regarding the Historical Dynamics of Modern Society.


Full Title:

Fundamental Hypothesis Regarding the Dialectical Historical Dynamics of Modern Society.





Dear Readers,


¿How do we grasp, at the highest level, the unity and totality of modern history, of capitalism?

Below is my rendition of the core of the F.E.D.’s answer, based upon the work of Karl Seldon.

The passage below mentions a [new, ‘qualo-quantitative’] “metric” for Marx’s fundamental concept of “the social forces of production”. 

That metric, and the breakthrough in dialectical social science that it represents, has been scheduled for public release, by the F.E.D. General Council, under advisement from the F.E.D. Special Council of Psychohistorians, for a target date in the month following this month.

Thus, that metric is not constructed herein, but I plan to construct it for you in a blog-entry that I am planning for next month.



Regards,

Miguel  








The metric of the human social forces of production is a measure of the unified, Darwinian and ‘Meta-Darwinian’ fitness of the human species, because that metric measures the rate of human-societal [self-]reproduction, both actual and potential -- actual, for the past, up to the present of the human species, therefore also potential, for the future of the human species -- thus measuring the combined, biological, Human-Genomic, Darwinian fitness of humanity, and the ‘Meta-Darwinian’, cultural, ‘Human-Phenomic’ fitness of humanity, together, as one.

The turn, from the ‘‘‘ascendance-phase’’’ to the ‘‘‘descendance-phase’’’ of the capital-centered system of social relations for the reproduction of human society is driven by the growth of the human social forces of production to a level beyond that at which, core, concentrated-ownership industrial capital, hence capitalism itself, can be profitable for its core ruling class.

That is, this turning point is the point after which the losses to core, concentrated-ownership industrial capital-value profitability, due to the ‘technodepreciation’ of ever-increasing portions of its fixed-capital-embodied capital-value, caused by further growth of the social forces of production, and by the competition-enforced retirement and periodic write-off of ever-increasing portions of that fixed-capital-value, against earnings, out-balances the gains to earnings -- to core, concentrated-ownership industrial capital-value profitability -- due to the heightened “factor productivity”, and the reduced unit costs of production, also caused by that further growth of the social forces of production.

Thereafter -- after that turning point -- the superficial appearance of core, concentrated-ownership, core-ruling-class-owned industrial capital profitability, and the economic enforcement of that superficial appearance, can only be maintained by drastic and draconian measures, measures which increasingly squander, destroy, and reverse the historic growth of the human social forces of production, which increasingly ‘‘‘de-industrialize’’’ the geographical capitalist core, and which also otherwise compromise human social reproduction, and which thus, more and more -- and at an accelerating rate, as this ‘‘‘descendance phase’’’ of modern society ensues -- reduce the combined, Darwinian, human-Genomic, and ‘Meta-Darwinian’, ‘human-Phenomic’ fitness of the human species, impending a ‘descendance-phase denouement’ of ruling-class-imposed [self-]extinction of that human species.

That is, the psycho-socio-political-economic phenomena that are the consequences of that turning point transform the once-progressive ‘ascendance-phase ruling-class’ into a 'hyper-degenerate', ‘descendance-phase ruling-class’, characterized by contradictory ideologies which can be described as Human Anti-Humanism [‘‘‘local’’’ historical name:  Eugenics”], Capitalist Anti-Capitalism [including protracted suppression of capitalist industrialization in the capitalist “hinterland”, the “periphery” of the geographical capitalist core, creating the “Third World”], and inverted, perverted application of the lessons of the human-social sciences developed in the ‘‘‘ascendance phase’’’, so as to reverse human progress by reversing the growth of the social forces of production [‘‘‘local’’’ historical description:  Anti-Marxian Marxianism].

This 'hyper-degenerated' ruling class thus promotes, in stealth, policies of police-state, totalitarian state-capitalism, and of “Eugenics”, i.e., of genocide -- of global wars of mass extermination, of global multi-genocide; of both overt and covert, stealth genocide, and of catastrophic, Neo-Malthusian “population reduction”.

This 'hyper-degenerated' ruling-class does so, eventually, in part, via its promotion of various varieties of “People Are Pollution” ideology, of new anti-progress, anti-science, anti-“technology”, ‘descendance-phase ideologies’, such we have seen ‘‘‘locally’’’-- a plutocracy-funded global resurgence of Dark Ages Religions, of Neo-Luddite “Back-to-Nature”-isms and “Neo-Primitivisms”, of “Small-Is-Beautiful”-isms [i.e., of ‘Weak-is-Beautiful-ism’ re:  the collective political power of the working-class to defend itself against ruling-class-imposed contracted social reproduction], of voluntary self-destitution of the working class for the sake of “The Environment”, of “Zero [i.e., negative] Economic Growth” for the global majority / working class, of “Zero [i.e., negative] Population Growth” for the global majority, of Animalism, etc., etc., ad nauseam.

In sum, this 'hyper-degenerated' ruling class -- in order to maintain its rule against the ‘technodepreciation’ of the core-capital-value economic foundation of its power; against the overthrow of its foundation by the growth of the social forces of production -- is hell-bent on imposing a new, neo-feudal Dark Ages upon the majority of global humanity, with the core of that ‘descendance-phase ruling-class’ as the ruling, New Dark Ages neo-/pseudo-“aristocracy”.

However, this New Dark Age is likely, contrary to the demented intentions and ‘hyper-unrealistic’ expectations of the ‘descendance-phase ruling class’, to quickly become a permanent, Final Dark Age for planet Earth -- one which not even the ‘exo-human’ planetary biosphere can survive -- in the form of a rapid, self-imposed extinction of the human species, including of that ‘Neroan’, ‘Caligulan’ ‘descendance-phase ruling-class’ itself, albeit itself so included contrary to its/their will.

When a sun-like star -- imprisoned by the ‘self-force’ of the ‘self-destiny’ determined by its own, inner ‘intra-duality’ [its ‘‘‘dialectical internal contradiction’’’] of self-caused, self-gravitational self-contraction, and of its opposing, self-contraction-induced core fusion thermonuclear self-expansion -- converts ~all of its core Hydrogen into core Helium, and begins to “burn” the Helium “ash” that remains there, it leaves the “stellar Main Sequence”, enters its ‘stellar descendance phase’, and heads toward stellar death. 

Like such a sun, modern society, capital-centered human society, when the ‘intra-duality’ of core capital no longer “nets-out” on the side of “self-expanding value” [Marx], through the reinvestment of surplus-value into new constant and variable capital, but, instead, begins to “net-out” on the opposite side, on the side of “self-contracting capital-value” [Seldon], due to accelerating ‘technodepreciation’ of high-fixed-capital-composition core-capital, modern society too enters its ‘‘‘descendance-phase’’’ -- enters a decline in its ‘social self-reproductive self-force’, a decline in its social-reproductive fitness which likewise destines it for self-destruction.

Luckily, human societies -- evolved later than, and, consequently, at a higher ‘meta-fractal’ scale of ‘inclusion complexity’ than stars -- contain greater ‘‘‘degrees of freedom’’’ than do, more deterministic, stars, so that there is still hope that we humans can pull out of the tail-spin of our ‘‘‘descendance phase’’’ as capital.

To start “pulling out”, and “pulling up, from our present and longstanding tail-spin into a New/Final Dark Age; to restart human progress; to resuscitate/regenerate human social reproduction, to begin to re-grow the human social forces of production -- the very ‘self-forces’ of human, social self-reproduction, of human-social self-productivity’ -- we must, collectively, ‘human-Phenomically’, learn something fundamental, yet new [to us].

We must learn to distinguish, conceptually, and to separate, in practice, capital from “technology”, capital from advanced-productivity means of production, and capital “profitability” from human-social ‘‘‘profitability’’’ -- from human-species fitness-maintaining and fitness-expanding human-social ‘self-reproductivity’.

If and when enough of us do so, then humanity can leave capital behind, i.e., we can subsume it, «aufheben» “contain” it, “contain” its dangers, and move on -- move up -- into the first-ever Global Renaissance of humanity, a renaissance of humanity as “the associated producers”, the producers of a re-accelerated growth of the social forces of production, the ‘self-producers’, the producers of a newly-growing planetary, ‘planetized’ humanity, expanding beyond our home planet.



“Overcome, we, the Iblis within ourselves, and the cosmos will be our canvas.

“We ourselves will be our works of art.

“We ourselves will be our work of art.” [Karl Seldon].




























Thursday, September 12, 2013

Citizen Stewardship Equity -- A Trans-Capitalist «Species» of ‘Generalized Equity’.




Full Title:

Citizen Stewardship Equity -- A Trans-Capitalist «Species» of ‘Generalized Equity’:

Key Implications of the New Constitutional Right of ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’,

a Higher Human Right that Emerges into Conditional Necessity -- as Necessary on Condition

that Humanity Survives -- During the ‘Descendence Phase’ of the Capital-Equity-based Mode

of Human-Societal Self-Reproduction.







Dear Reader,


¿What does political-economic democracy look like at the level of economic production?

Below is my rendition of a part of the answer, based upon a proposal by the Equitist Advocacy.

The very fact that the people’s -- the producers’ -- own [self-]government now provides “capital” to self-organized sub-groups of the people, based upon their collective merit, upon the collective merit of each such sub-group’s Citizen Stewardship producers’ cooperative business plan, already, in itself, renders such “capital” no longer ‘‘‘capital’’’ in the Marxian sense.

That is, the means of production, provided to a thus-qualified and thus-constituted Citizens Stewardship Cooperative, is no longer ‘‘‘capital’’’ in the sense of a social institution -- i.e., of a social relation of production -- that, together with the social institution of an equally ruling-class monopolized ownership of property in land, separates the vast majority of the people, of the workers, of the producers, from the means of their production, and of their daily reproduction, of their, and of human society’s, livelihoods, and life, respectively.

Capital, in that sense, is the social relation that “proletarianizes” that vast majority, forcing them, if they are to survive, to survive as self-sellers, as self-alienators -- as prostitutes -- to that capital, that is, to the class of the owners of capital and of landed property.

The workers -- the “associated producers” -- of a Citizen Stewardship Equity ‘socialized producers’ cooperative’ are, thus, proletarians no more.

They have become, instead, collective self-employers, and thus also collective owners of the profits that they produce, as well as individual owners of the work-time compensation that they earn, using the whole-society-owned means of production to which, based upon the merit of their business plan, they have been granted stewardship -- not local ownership -- by a Citizen Stewardship Equity social bank, competing with other such social banks, and in return for a social rent for the use of those means of production, paid out of the proceeds of what they produce, and sell, in competition with other such Citizen Stewardship enterprises, using those means of production.




For more about the predicted 'Citizen Stewardship Equity' component of the predicted 'Generalized Equity' social relation of production, see the essay on 'Generalized Equity' by the Equitist Advocacy group, via the following link --

http://www.equitism.org/Equitism/Theory/PoliticalEconomicDemocracy/PoliticalEconomicDemocracy.htm




Regards,

Miguel