“Along with the
constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and
monopolize all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of
misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows
the revolt of the working-class, a class always increasing in numbers, and
disciplined, united, organized by the very mechanism of the process of
capitalist production itself.”
Marx, Capital, Book I, “Historical Tendency of
Capitalist Accumulation”
1. “Bourgeois reformists, who are echoed by
certain opportunists among the Social-Democrats, assert that there is no
impoverishment of the masses taking place in capitalist society. ‘The Theory of
impoverishment’ is wrong, they say, for the standard of living of the masses is
improving, if slowly, and the gulf between the haves and have-nots is
narrowing, not widening. The falsity of such assertions has lately been
revealed to the masses more and more clearly. The cost of living is rising.
Wages, even with the most stubborn and most successful strike
movement, are increasing much more slowly than the necessary expenditure of
labour power. And side by side with this, the wealth of the capitalists is
increasing at a dizzy rate..
(…)Food, clothing, fuel and rent have all
become more expensive. The worker is becoming impoverished absolutely,
i.e., he is actually becoming poorer than before; he is compelled to live
worse, to eat worse, to suffer hunger more, and to live in basements and
attics.
(…) But the relative impoverishment of
the workers. i.e., the diminution of their share in the national
income, is still striking. The workers’ comparative share in capitalist
society. which is fast growing rich, is dwindling because the millionaires are
becoming ever richer.
(…)Wealth in capitalist society is growing at
an incredible rate – side by side with the impoverishment of the mass of the
workers. “
Does this so concise
and true analysis of what immediately seems before our eyes the present living
condition of working class and working masses, come from the pen of a communist
of our time? Is this picture –so exact
in its details and so tough in its denunciation- of a situation which is daily becoming worse in
every country of the world, the fruit of a Marxist of today who lives in the
situation of the present ‘capitalist
‘globalization’?
No, it was written by
Lenin 96 years ago, in November of 1912 (Lenin
Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow, Volume 18, pages
435-436). At first sight it strikes us for its impressive relevance to the
present.
2. Also in Italy, a
declining imperialist country, there grows the increasing impoverishment of
labourers and working people, as a consequence of the deepening of capitalist
crisis and the application of capitalist recipes to lower wages and rise
profits. Besides, the augmented fullness and duration of unemployment, the increase in prices of
consumer goods, taxes, loans, rents, give rise to a further constant reduction
of workers’ wages.
This causes an impoverishment
which goes on without any
interruption and expands continuously, as the same bourgeois statistics prove.
This impoverishment has a twofold peculiarity: it is both relative (i.e., the
share of national income belonging to the working-class decreases), and
absolute (the mere lowering of the working-class living standard).
This is a matter enormously felt
a t a mass level and involves a lot of
aspects of the life of every working-class family and anyone who lives on their
work (wages, working time, accidents at work, house, bills, school expenditure,
health service, taxes, cultural and moral decay, etc.). The economic situation
of stagflaction, the wave of dismissals,
the capitalist pressure to give workers
a share, always smaller, of the value produced and lower wages under the value of the indispensable means of subsistence, the
further restriction of consumption, the consequences of the neo liberalist
policy are making even sharper the problem
for millions of workers and pensioners who already live
in the total absence of certainty
and with always less hopes to improve their living conditions.
Hundreds of thousands proletarian families who hardly arrive at the end
of the month, every day see their own conditions worsen and go into poverty
for any unexpected event: dismissal,
redundancy, illness, accident, loans instalments, which rise, etc. This process
reveals, among other things, in the worsening of house and lodging conditions, in the
worsening of wealth conditions of Italian workers.
Of course, this drama doesn’t affect only the proletariat, which in all
its components, is the first victim of the capitalist roller, but also small
peasants, large strata of white-collar lower middle classes of towns, retailers
and craftsmen, sectors of intelligentsia, It has its peak in the south.
Here are some statistics.
From 2001 to 2005 there has been estimated a loss in the purchasing
power of 14,1% for workers, 20,4% for lower level employees. Between 2005 and
2006 the indebtedness of Italian families has risen of 9,8%.
From 2004 to 2007, the net salary of Italian workers have gone from the
19th to the 23rd
place in the OECD classification, under that of
According to the Eurispes Report of 2007, more than half of Italian
families get s a monthly total income lower than 1900 euro (please note that
the average wage of Italian workers is 1170 euro per month). There are more
than 5 million families, equal to 15 million people, who are poor (the 23% of
Italian population.
Seven million of old people get pensions of 500 euro per month and
suffer from hunger. One fourth of Italian young people is under the risk of
poverty; these are figures of an underdeveloped country.
According to Istat (Central Institute of Statistics) figures for 2008, the 15% of workers’
families doesn’t succeed in arriving at the end of the month; the 9,3% are in
arrear with the payments of the bills for water, electricity and gas; the 10,4%
have not got the money for medical expenses; the 16,8% for buying necessary
clothes; the 10,4% for heating their houses; and the 4,2%
can’t even buy the necessary food.
According to a paper of BRI (Bank of International Regulations, which
groups together all the central banks), in only a quarter of century the system
of enterprises has taken eight points in
percentage of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) out of wages. Before the ’80 years, the profit took the 23,2% of GDP;
today they get almost the 32% of it: In
monetary figures, eight points of GDP are equal to 120 milliard euro. It is
clear that the inequality in the distribution of wealth is going back to levels
of 1800.
The president of the Bank of Italy, Mr Draghi, has recently acknowledged
that the average salary of subordinate
workers, after taxes and contributions in real terms, have stopped at the level
of 15 years ago. Therefore, the difference between wage and the smallest necessary yearly expenses
increases more and more. Yet, Mr Draghi and his capitalist friends, who earn
million of euro per year, go on maintaining (together with the leadership of
trade unions) the necessity to cut wages and pensions further and to weaken the
national collective agreements. This is the real aspect of capitalism!
Of course, the impoverishment of the large masses which is happening in
our country is the aspect of a phenomenon which is becoming worse at an
international level.
From a research of UNO, published in 2006, it turns out that the ratio
between the income of the 20% of the richest people in the world and the income
of the 20% of the poorest one was of 3 to
According to FAO, 74 million people
in
3. This is the
dramatic situation in which today the workers and the proletarian masses live
in Italy, in
In issue n°18/2007 of our
theoretical journal ‘Teoria e
Prassi’ (Theory and Praxis) we reminded
that the theory of the tendential fall
of the rate of profit has been and is still the ‘most discussed and criticized
marxist economic theory’. But the same fate have had the Marxian theses on
impoverishment, which have also been unanimously rejected by the academic
bourgeois science and by its the reformist theorist followers.
One of the first who challenged them was Bernstein in his
book The Prerequisites for Socialism and the Tasks of Social Democracy
(1899) who made of this assertion one of the bases of his revisionism and reformism. As to Italian
contemporary bourgeois economists, it is enough to name only two: Paolo Sylos
Labini, who in many of his writings has constantly asserted that the thesis of
impoverishment is one of Marx’s ‘three more serious mistakes’., and
Michel Salviati, who, on the point of
‘Marx’s few observations on the raising impoverishment of proletariat’,
thinks that it is ‘useless to debate if it is absolute or relative poverty:
with this observation Marx din’t want to set up a hypothesis about the motive
of the revolutionary action’. Obviously for him, too, as for Bernstein, the
motives of the revolutionary action
haven’t got their roots in the immanent tendencies of the capitalistic mode of
production, but are all ideological and cultural (it so happens that Salviati
has been one of the promoters of the neo-liberal Partito Democratico
(Democratic Party) of Mr Walter Veltroni, who has considered the ‘dialogue’
with the ultra-reactionary government of
Mr Berlusconi the reason of its existence).
To explain the real contents of
Marx’s analysis we consider helpful to quote some extracts fron two of his works particularly meaningful, because they
both contain the living testimony og the tight rapport existing between Marx’s theoretical elaboration and its link with the working class movement of
his age: Relation of Wage-Labour to
Capital: the outcome of a series of conferences he delivered in Brussels in
1849 at the <German Workers’
Association>, and Value
, Price and profit, delivered by Marx in 1865 at the venue of the General Council of the <International Association of
Workers> (First International).
4. The following
passage describes the reduction of what Marx calls the labourer’s ‘relative or
proportional wage’:
<Rapid growth of productive
capital calls forth just as rapid a growth of wealth, of luxury, of social
needs and social pleasures. Therefore, although the pleasures of the labourer
have increased, the social gratification which they afford has fallen in
comparison with the increased pleasures of the capitalist, which are
inaccessible to the worker, in comparison with the stage of development of
society in general. Our wants and pleasures have their origin in society; we
therefore measure them in relation to society; we do not measure them in
relation to the objects which serve for their gratification. Since they are of
a social nature, they are of a relative nature.
(…) The share of capitals in
proportion to the share of labour has risen. The distribution of social wealth between capital and labour has
become still more unequal. The capitalists commands a greater amount of labour
with the same capital. The power of the capitalist class over the working class
has grown, the social position of the worker has become worse, has been forced
down still another degree below that of the capitalist.
(…) Within the relation of capital
and wage-labour, the interests of capitals and the interests of wage-labour are
diametrically opposed to each other.
A rapid growth of capital is
synonymous with a rapid growth of profits. Profits can grow rapidly only when
the price of labour –the relative wages- decrease just as rapidly. Relative
wages may fall, although real wages rise simultaneously with nominal wages,
with the money value of labour, provided only that the real wage does not rise
in the same proportion as the profit. If, for instance,, in good business years
wages rise 5 per cent, while profits rise 30 per cent, the proportional, the
relative wage has not increased, but decreased.
(…) Even the most favourable
situation for the working class, namely, the most rapid growth of capital,
however much it may improve the material life of the worker, does not abolish
the antagonism between his interests and the interests of the capitalist.
Profit and wages remain as before, in inverse proportion.
If
capital grows rapidly, wages may rise, but the profit of capital rises
disproportionately faster. The material position of the worker has improved,
but at the cost of his social position. The social chasm that separates him
from the capitalist has widened>.
(Wage Labour and Capital, Marx Engels Internet Archive).
After sixteen years, studying in detail the analysis on the basis of
what he himself had worked out in the Capital,
Marx -in his exposition at the First
International- clarifies at first that
<The value of the labouring
power is formed by two elements –the one merely physical, the other historical
or social. Its ultimate limit is determined by the physical element, that is to
say, to maintain and reproduce itself, to perpetuate its physical existence,
the working class must receive the necessaries absolutely indispensable for
living and multiplying. (…)
Besides this mere physical element, the value
of labour is in every country determined by a traditional standard of life. (…) the fixation of its actual degree is only settled by the continuous
struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to
reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its
physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite
direction. The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers
of the combatants>.
But Marx’s analysis goes further on the occasional respective powers of
the combatants, which in some definite occasions may permit the working
class ‘improve temporarily their
situation’.
<The price of the labour
market>, he writes, <as that of all
other commodities, in long terms will adapt itself to its value;
therefore in spite of all ups and downs,
and in spite of everything the labourer may do, after all he will receive only
the value of his labour power>
By what are the limits
of the value of labour determined?
<As to the limits of the value
of labour, its actual settlement always depends upon supply and demand, I mean
the demand for labour on the part of capital, and the supply of labour by the
working men>.
Considering –Marx points out- the
growing development of the capitalist mode o f production, <(…) One
might infer, as Adam Smith, in whose days modern industry was still in its
infancy, did infer, that the accelerated accumulation of capital must turn the
balance in favour of the working man, by securing a growing demand for his
labour. (…) But simultaneously with the
progress of accumulation there takes place a progressive change in the
composition of capital. The part of the aggregate capital which consists of
fixed capital, machinery, raw materials, means of production in all possible
forms, progressively increases as compared with the other part of capital,
which is laid out in wages or in the purchase of labour> (It is the
phenomenon which in the Capital will
be defined by Marx as <rise of organic composition of capital> Editor’s
note)
(….) In the progress of industry
the demand for labour keeps, therefore, no pace with the accumulation of capital. It will still increase, but
increase in a constantly diminishing ratio as compared with the increase of
capital>.
As a consequence
<(…) the very development of modern
industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against
the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic
production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages (bold
type is ours), or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum
limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system>.
5. Therefore, according to the marxian scientific
analysis, this is the general tendency of the capitalistic mode of production;
tendency which with the accumulation of capital goes in one direction only:
that of the concentration of enormous wealth, luxury, parasitism, waste,
idleness in one pole of society; while in the other pole exploitation and oppression become more and
more intense, unemployment ad temporary employment grow, the poverty and hunger
of those who with their work produce wealth, increase.
It is important to notice that Marx
does not identify any general counter tendency of capitalism which goes in the
opposite direction, , unlike, for example, the counter tendencies or
<antagonistic causes> analyzed by Marx –in the Capital, Book 3- in relation to the tendential fall of the rate of
profit.
The working class struggle
itself <against the effects> of
this tendency –Marx states with extreme clarity- <can
only retard the downward movement, but not change its direction >. The necessary daily <guerrilla war> of the proletariat for the defence of its fundamental living and
working conditions <applies only palliatives, but does not cures
the malady>. That is why, <instead of the conservative motto ‘A fair
day’s wage for a fair day’s work’, workers ought to inscribe on their banner
the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wages system!>
(Value, Price and Profit, Marx Engels Internet Archive).
Abolition of the wages system: that
is proletarian revolution, expropriation of capitalists, demolition of their
state machinery, construction of socialism. This is the only way to put an end
to the enrichment of bourgeois parasites and the impoverishment of the working
masses.
6. The
problem of the worsening of the living
conditions of the working masses, which is an inevitable result of capitalistic
accumulation, is strictly connected to the fundamental contradiction of the present mode of production, that
between the more and more social character of the production process and the
capitalistic private form of appropriation of the manufactured goods. Therefore
it is a field of fundamental struggle to
push the working class to free itself from the tyranny of capital, a very large
field thanks to which we will be able do develop among workers the true class
conscience, a real field for the conquest of
advanced proletarian workers to the cause of socialism and for the
extension of the influence of communists over large sectors of working masses
who are crushed by the capitalist roller.
Therefore we must develop action on
the matter of impoverishment, not only to present a series of demands to
improve the conditions of the working class and popular masses, but above all
to claim the abolition of capitalism, an obsolete system, historically
outdated, and suggest the road to
socialism, the planned society which
since its birth will be able to guarantee the fundamental needs of workers
and a life without any worries for the masses.
7. We close this short paper quoting from Lenin
again, who in his A draft of Our Party Programme (1899)
(in Collected Works, Book 4, Internet Archive ) wrote:
(…)
this should be followed by outline of the fundamental tendency of capitalism
–the splitting of the people into a bourgeoisie and a proletariat, the growth of the <the mass of misery,
oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation>. These famous words of Marx are repeated in the second paragraph of the
Erfut Programme of the German Social-Democratic Party, and the critics that are
grouped about Bernstein have recently made particularly violent attacks
precisely against this point, repeating the old objections raised by bourgeois
liberals and social-politicians against the
<theory of impoverishment>.
In our opinion the polemic that has raged round this question has
demonstrated the utter groundlessness of such <criticism> .
Bernstein himself admitted that the above words of Marx were true as a
characterization of the tendency of capitalism –a tendency that becomes
a reality in the absence of the class struggle of the proletariat against it.,
in the absence of labour protection laws achieved by the working class. It is
precisely in
(…)An so, the words about the growth of <the
mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation> must, in our
opinion, imperatively be included in our programme –first, because they faith
fully describe the basic and essential features of capitalism, they
characterise precisely the process that unrolls before our eyes and that is one
of the chief reasons for the emergence of the working-class movement and
socialism in Russia; secondly, because these words provide a fund of material
for agitation, because they summarise a whole series of phenomena that most
oppress the masses of the workers, but, at he same time, most arouse their
indignation (unemployment, low wages, under nourishment, famine, the Draconian
discipline of capital, prostitution, the growth in the number of domestics,
etc.).
These are words addressed to us communists of today, to all the
communists of our time, for the discussion and preparation of the political
programme of the working class Communist party which we, with common effort of
the vanguard labourers of our country, must reconstruct.