Crucial Choices
No political movement, be it revolutionary workers’ movement or climate movement, can develop successfully in a historically obsolete thus retrogressive space. If you chose a wrong battlefield while your adversary has chosen the correct battlefield, you are already in a much less favorable situation to dominate the fight and your position becomes even more embarrassing and less tenable. In this article, we will try to present the theoretical aspects that backs up what we think is the correct battlefield and the constitutive elements of a possible strategy that suits it.
*
§.1. If national borders can halt the viruses and save the country from global pandemics by isolating it from the world or if they can stop the proliferation of arms or drug trafficking or terrorism or money laundering or capital flow, then the globalisation is not an objective dynamic, it is a subjective political choice. But we know that even with an utmost diligence no country can do these.
§.2. The working-class revolutionary and the climate activist share the same enemy, capitalism, and the same fate and fortune. One talks about an effective fight for an eventual human emancipation and the other for a livable planet. They organize two great progressive movements whose time has come to change the world. Together they raise the most fundamental question: Will human beings survive as species today in order to be able construct tomorrow a universal society of emancipated humanity? Any other question about human condition is eclipsed by this fundamental question.
§.3. Already heavily guilt-laden, capitalism is also guilty of a near-collapse of the climate. The climate is global, the destiny of these two greats movements is global. And capitalism is global. Global in the sense that there is not one single inch square of the earth not contaminated by its action or influence.
§.4. The essence of capitalism is the logic of “profit for the sake of profit” or simply “profit for the profit”. The self-actualisation of life envisaged by this mode of production is to make profit for the only reason to have made profit. If through profit, through this drive, the needs are satisfied, this is only secondary event, not accidental but secondary event. Not accidental, since a need must nevertheless be satisfied, so a commodity must have a use-value. But a need can be invented and, to meet this invented need, a commodity can be invented. This is perfectly accepted in an alienated world. So, the satisfaction of needs, real or invented, is dependent upon the “profit for the profit” drive.
§.5. The “profit for the profit”, this irrational but primeval drive, is the defining feature of capitalism and a resumé of its essence. Its essence. All other features of capitalism, like production, surplus value, exchange, distribution, money, market prices, capital accumulation etc. are all objectifications of this essence.
§.6. Capitalism needs space and superstructure. Historically, the feudal mode of production did not provide a legal, political, ideological and cultural superstructure for the development of capitalism, hence for the capital accumulation. The collapse and the disintegration of the grand feudal empires and of small feudal principalities freed the great masses of serfs chained to the land with no independent individual political existence and paved the way for the formation of nation-states where they could be transformed into workers free to sell their commodified labour in this particular space.1 At least in Europe, the formation of nation-states was almost a historical necessity. Nation-state, formed by uniting, usually by force, different ethnic communities under a supra-identity on a territory marked by national borders and ruled by a sovereign legitimate power, was the norm for the development of capitalism. It proved to be perfectly capable of functioning as a crucible for exploitation, capital accumulation, competition, development of means of production, and all-around social progress for a long historical period.
§.7. In broad terms, that was the period of industrial capitalism, national borders enhancing the development of productive forces and thus being a historically progressive phenomenon. Since particular legal and political structures of a nation-state was based on its sovereignty, its borders were protected against other nation-states. The protection of borders was the protection of the national market. The national independence was the independence of the national market from any unwanted outside interference. The economy of a nation-state was essentially protective and inward looking.
§.8. By contrast, for today’s global capitalism which is under the hegemony of transnational monopoly capital, national borders, where they exist, exist strictly only for the labour, otherwise they are a nuisance, to be jumped over or to be dealt with. The base of the global capitalism is not national identities, it is the grand mass of neutral customers. National borders hamper the development of capitalism, they are now historically reactionary structures. Envisaging the fight primarily within the national borders is thus regressive and futile. Revolutionaries and climate activists have an advantage in Europe where internal national borders melted away many years ago.
§.9. We are now living in the transition period of capitalism towards a high technology-based information age. The primary space of accumulation for monopoly capital is no longer the nation-state. Even the cyber space, activated by the touch of a computer button, is more of a space for accumulation of capital than the nation-state. As to the capital existing outside the monopolistic sphere, the sections of it still survive in the national space provided that it can be articulated into the supranational monopolistic sphere by undertaking the production of components likely to reduce the profits if they were to be integrated to the grand-scale production. In other words, they can exist only as “customers” of monopolies. Non-monopoly capital thus contributes to the accumulation of monopoly capital without reducing the monopoly profit.
§.10. Today, nation-state is already in the “glorious” and “nostalgic” dustbin of history. Although passed its “sell-by date”, national identity with its notorious luggage, nationalism and racism, persists to exist, but it’s a different story. We must now have a closer look at the question of why nation-state is no longer a viable unit for the accumulation of capital and scrutinize the reasons of its demise. In other words, we must substantiate the above arguments.
§.11. First of all, a single world market, which was once a rather theoretical anticipation, has become a fully constructed reality. Tremendously rapid development of productive forces creating gigantic production capacities tears up any obstacle, mainly the national borders, which did not arise from this development.
§.12. The national borders are torn up both from the production side and the consumption side. The development of productive forces is intrinsically related to the movement of the profit which we will analyse later, but for the moment let us point out that, with the delocalisation of many industries, the production is globalised in many sectors.
Let’s see the production of one of the revolutionary commodities of capitalism par excellence: the car. An average car has about 30,000 parts. The global manufacturing network for the parts of Ford Escort include the following fifteen countries, final assembly lines being located in Halewood in UK and Sarrelouis in Germany: Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, Holland, Norway, France, Belgium, Denmark, Canada, United States, Austria, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Japan.2 This was nearly forty years ago, but it is safe to say that the production of diverse parts and accessories of a car is further fragmented today after the integration of several digital systems into it.
Let’s have a look at a second example. Airbus and Boeing currently build the biggest passenger airplanes in the world . They are rivals from each side of the Atlantic. No one single country can build alone the Airbus. Airbus is a joint corporation of France, Germany, UK, Spain, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Poland, Romania and Turkey.
§.13. As to the consumption side, a simple glance gives us the same picture. If the production time of a commodity, say a consumer durable, is halved, assuming that the demand is constant or having little fluctuations, the market will be doubled. But the spatial size of a national market being same, surplus offer must be exported to other national markets, and if the halved production time of that commodity is generalised, there will be a doubled offer of it for each economy. If one thinks of all the national economies for all the commodities, one cannot help but reach the conclusion that the development of the means of production creates an offer which grows faster and faster than the demand.3 And this acceleration tears up any national border first by the movement of commodities, then by the movement of capitals. Certain commodities, like the Airbus we mentioned above in relation to the geographic spread of its production, do not even wait for shorter production times to tear up national borders, right from the beginning of their conception and their destination is a borderless space.
§.14. Capitalism has grown out of the nation-state which was responsible for its upbringing, it cannot fit into it any more. And there is no regression to its original existence, to its childhood, even if the world stood still, since the history does not go back to an earlier and less advanced epoch. With open-ended technological development, limitless potential for production driven by the senseless “profit for the profit” logic, globalised capitalism denies even more decisively today than yesterday the humanity the perspective of human emancipation in a healthy planet.
§.15. Now we turn to the question of the state. Let’s start with stating the obvious: If the nation-state fades away from the scene, it doesn’t mean that the state also fades away. The capitalist state, born as the national state of the nation-state, is no longer the national state of the nation-state. With the fading away of the nation-state, the state adapts itself to the globalisation. Its priority is to defend the interests of the global capital with keeping intact its status of holder of the legitimate violence in its country.
§.16. To develop the ongoing argument, we propose to start with dwelling on the role of the state in capitalist economy without any reference to the historical context but with relation to the movement of profit. The mode of existence of profit is motion. Profit moves. Profit moves to accumulate capital and accumulated capital moves to create profit.
§.17. The movement of profit is harnessed by two fundamental laws which work as tendencies: the law of equalisation of the rate of profit and the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall (the terms ‘average rate of profit’ and ‘general rate of profit’ are also used with the same sense). These two laws grip tightly the very existence of capitalism like two parts of an iron vice holding an object tight 4. The tendential character of these two laws allows time for the state intervention.
§.18. First let us see how the state intervenes to modulate the unfolding of the law of equalisation of the rate of profit. All the individual capitalists do not and cannot move simultaneously their capital from sector to sector, or more precisely from the sectors where the organic composition of capital is low to the ones where it is high, since not all capitalists have the required amount of investment capital available for such a movement. We must keep in mind that this movement has competition as its background. The state can and does intervene in favour of some individual capitalists against the others, hence distorting the competition. This preferential treatment is a prerogative of the state, used with marked preference for monopoly capital. This economic intervention can take many forms: investment incentives, tax rebates, free zones, preferential credits, debt reliefs, loose regulations, informal negotiations etc. . So, the rates of profit are partly equalised through the state’s action. Finally, we must note that the general or average rate of profit emerging by the equalisation of the rates of profit of all sectors has only an ephemeral existence, so ephemeral that simultaneously it exists and it doesn’t exist. There is no rupture between the moment where each sector has a different rate of profit and the moment there is a general rate of profit for all, this means that the capital flow is continuous. The state intervenes also to accelerate or decelerate the capital flow selectively, according to its choice of favoured sectors, its industrial strategy and especially the model of capital accumulation it wants to impose.
§.19. Same interventionist logic works even in a more radical way for the tendency of the rate of average profit to fall. Increasing organic composition of capital with technological development lowers the rate of profit for a given rate of surplus value. Let us see this.
§.20. We start with the following equation:
p=s/(C+V),
where p is the rate of profit, s is the surplus value, C is the constant capital and V is the variable capital, i.e. total of wages.
Dividing by V the numerator and the denominator of the fraction on the right-hand side of the equation, we have:
p= (s/V) / [(C+V)/V] = (s/V) / [(C/V) + (V/V)] = (s/V) / [C/V+1].
Since s/V is the ratio between the surplus value produced and the variable capital spent i.e. total wages payed, it is the rate of surplus value, in other words the rate of exploitation that we can denote with ‘e’.
So, if we replace ‘s/V’ in the last equation, that is in the equation of p = (s/V) / [C/V+1], with ‘e’, we have
p = e / [C/V+1].
Technological progress increases non-stop the constant capital ‘C’. So, for a fixed variable capital ‘V’ (i.e. the wages), the ratio C/V increases. That means that a fixed rate of exploitation ‘e’ divided by an ever-increasing quantity gives us an ever-decreasing ‘p’ the rate of profit. This is the law of the rate of profit to fall, but, as we said, it is only a tendency because at the same time counteracting factors work in a way to reverse this tendency, that is to slow down the fall of the rate of profit and eventually to stop and raise it. These factors work also as tendencies.
§.21. Among these counteracting factors comes the first and foremost, a higher rate of exploitation, ‘e’. In the above argument, to demonstrate the falling profit rate, we assumed the rate of exploitation ‘e’ constant, but of course it needn’t be. To intensify the exploitation is to increase the ‘s/V’. That can be done either by increasing the surplus value produced ‘s’, or by decreasing the variable capital i.e. the mass of wages paid ‘V’ or by doing both. The surplus value is increased either by lengthening the working hours of the day, but there is a physical limit to this (appropriation of absolute surplus value), or by applying production methods, faster rhythms etc. which increase output per worker (appropriation of relative surplus value). The wages can be forcefully depressed below the value of labour power and/or the commodities which enter necessarily into the reproduction of the labour power can be supplied at low prices. Besides, certain elements of the constant capital, buildings, raw materials and energy can be obtained cheaply. Finally, we must mention a very important factor that counteracts the falling rate of profit: Capital exportation to countries where the labour power is cheap, even extremely cheap, necessities of life are also cheap, exploitation is sky-high and the profits flourish.
§.22. And this is where the state comes into the picture as it does with the law of equalisation of the rate of profit. But this time not for the particular but the general, not to favour the capitalists of certain sectors or certain capitalists of a given sector, but to help out the entire capitalist class. Some of the counteracting factors stems from the falling rate of profit itself, they are thus endogenous factors, i.e. factors generated from within the tendency of the falling rate of profit. The others are intentional political actions of agents, they are thus exogenous factors. State intervenes in order to reverse the tendency of the falling rate of the profit for the benefit of the entire capitalist class. State intervention is favourably implicated in the field of both the endogenous factors and the exogenous factors. The working hours can be lengthened by legislation. Working class fights against such legislation by strikes and demonstrations and the state acts as the state of the capitalist class. The exploitation is an intrinsic character of capitalist mode of production, yet it has to be protected by political intervention. The same is true for the wages, an intrinsic character of capitalist mode of production, yet they can be frozen forcefully by state intervention. State attributes incentives to technological innovations, thus contributes to the augmentation of relative surplus value. As one of the important exogenous factors, that is ones not related to the falling rate of profit, is capital exportations to less developed countries. State is present there not only by its choice of capital accumulation model but also as a deal-maker, as a signatory of international accords and as a potential aggressor.
§.23. How does the state adopt itself to the globalisation?
By partially metamorphosing its functions. In a deep level of abstraction, we can say that the capitalist state is derived from the capital itself, or more elaborately, from the capitalist mode of production based on commodity exchange. The existence of the surplus value means that the class struggle is inevitable and the dominant class will use the organized forces of its state in this struggle. As capitalism develops, the commodification and the proletarianization develop, the class struggle takes many different forms and the role of the state in these struggles becomes more sophisticated. So, speaking for the entire history, we can even say that the state at a given moment of history is the summary of the past class struggles.
But what interest us is not this level of abstraction but an intermediary and a more functional level of abstraction. With the natural emergence of monopoly capitalism out of capital accumulation and centralization, the state assumes a direct economic role in the functioning of capitalism. Monopolies fuse with state apparatus in a single politico-economic mechanism giving rise to the state monopoly capitalism. An environment is sealed against the entry of non-monopoly capital to protect the super-profits of monopoly capital. The fusion of the state and the monopolies in a single mechanism means that there is no longer a purely economic decision or a purely political decision. Each political decision has repercussions on the economy and each economic decision will have a political effect.
We think that, maybe with some slight modification, the concept of the state monopoly capitalism born more than a hundred years ago, is not only validated by the globalization of capitalism but has become the most useful concept to understand the theory of the state itself. Today’s state distorted the original meaning of national sovereignty, which was total political independence, by partially transforming itself into the vicious guardian of multinational interests. For global capitalism this distortion is on the one hand a precious “asset” to keep, and on the other hand a “liability” to deal with. An “asset”, since thanks to this distortion, the national holder of the legitimate violence, the state, uses ever so casually and rapidly the oppressive measures for the particular interests of transnational monopolies and also for stopping or curbing the global population movements. A “liability”, since even in its distorted form, national sovereignty slows down to a certain extent the global capital movement of transnational monopolies, because the collective consciousness of the people of the country is not yet “globalized”. It is still difficult and too early to “think global”. For transnational monopolies, the ideal is to be ever welcomed anywhere, having freely the police protection of the state of the country and never held accountable to any national judicial system.
§.24. Since all capitalist economies are subject to the same constraints and laws of the single world market, and living in the same conjuncture, we can talk about a generalised tendency to fall for different rates of profit for different sections of monopoly capital. Although each rate falls at a different speed, tendency to fall collectively is generalised. Each wants to jack up its own falling rate and, besides resorting to endogenous counteracting factors, they all want to increase commodity and capital exports. World market gets more and more “crowded” and shrinks, like everyone standing up in their seats in the stadium to see the pitch better but only seeing less of it. Shrinking world market and generalised fall of profit rates interact to push the world capitalist economy into a periodic crisis. The state comes into the picture to delay the start by assuming the functions of the crisis. With the disappearance one way or the other capital surplus and excess stocks, the crisis comes to an end and the blind race towards the same old “target” of overproduction starts afresh.
§.25. There is one relatively recent development exposing to what extent state monopoly capitalism, or simply the state and the monopolies hand in hand, can go to jeopardize the future of humanity just to assure the continuity of accumulation of monopoly profits: commodifying the pollution, more precisely pollution with carbon emissions. Like the commodification of food, clothes, shelter, health care, pollution is commodified. It is truly incredible! The greenhouse gas emitters can continue polluting the atmosphere provided that they pay for their harmful contribution to the global warming, based on the polluter pays principle. It is like income tax. What taxpayer pays is proportional to his income and what polluter pays is proportional to the potential damage he causes to the climate by the volume of his emission. The pollution becomes a right, like paying taxes is a “right” according to the tax office. The carbon price is the cost of carbon pollution and this cost is integrated into constant capital thus integrated into the tendency of equalisation of the rate of profit and that of the rate of profit to fall. The polluters are also issued with carbon credits they can sell to other polluters. So, like there is a staple food market, finance market, precious metal market etc., there is a “pollution market”. This pollution market gives yet another device to the state to frame the competition. Pollution becomes an expression of freedom. Surely enough state ignores real solutions to climate crisis with this kind of fake solutions, thus negating the real solutions. We will not go any further on this subject. Profit moves in a mysterious way.
§.26. The concept of the state monopoly capitalism facilitates to understand the crucial role of the state in the context of crisis. In most succinct form, state replaces the function of crisis.
§.27. Let’s see the crisis first from the production side.
Capitalism has an inherent tendency towards overproduction. The organic composition of capital, C/V increases constantly with improvements in technology and rising levels of productivity, hence lowering the rate of profit but creating an excess of capital. To restart the upward movement of the rate of profit, the excess capital must be devalued, i.e. rendered worthless. When the action of counteracting factors is exhausted and no longer able to reverse the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the crisis breaks out. And it usually breaks out after being triggered by a single event. The state monopoly capitalism, where, let’s remember, the economic, financial and political powers of the monopoles and those of the state are fused into a single mechanism, creates a favorable environment for quick state intervention to finance the capital loss of the monopolies, thus destroying the capital under state control, i.e. the budget resources. Thus, by its voluntary action state assumes the function of the crisis, in a way it substitutes itself to the action of crisis.
In 2008, USA federal government bailed out the banks and other financial corporations after the crisis emerged as the mortgage market in the USA collapsed in 2007. One can say that it was about a financial crisis not a crisis stemming from an excess of capital and overproduction. But if we have a closer look at what triggered the crisis, we see a burst of housing bubble, i.e. the sudden collapse of house asset prices affecting over half of the US population, as a consequence of unfair, deceptive, fraudulent lending of creditors targeting low-income homebuyers with low repayment potential, excessive risk-taking by global financial institutions and piling up worthless financial assets in the banks. The question is, why did these creditors who are part of the financial capital resort to such extremely risky and shady operations? Because, firstly their capital had nowhere to go, that is it was an excess capital, useless to bring monopoly profits; secondly, they knew that state would compensate their disappeared capital at the expense of treasury funds to avoid the worst. We must also note that the 2007–2008 financial crisis, although burst in the USA, was the most severe worldwide economic crisis since the Great Depression, and that it is also known as the Global Financial Crisis.
§.28. Now if we look at the crisis from the consumption side, we will have a complementary picture to the above argument.
To counteract the fall of the rate of profit, as we mentioned before, workers’ wages can be depressed below the subsistence level and, besides that, the increase of output per worker leads to lay-offs, aggravating the unemployment and poverty. But since the capital accumulation continues, there will be an overproduction of commodities for which there will be less and less buyers. Supply increases, demand decreases. Abundant but worthless material wealth goes hand in hand with the poverty, creating a crisis of overproduction in the middle of underconsumption. The state again intervenes to supply unemployment benefits, mainly from the state budget, thus engages itself to solve privately created problem of commodity overproduction of monopoly capital by public means. And it encourages consumption by all means at his disposal, especially by consumer credits, if the excess of certain commodities seems too difficult to be absorbed by the market, it may buy the stocks or help to reduce their rotation time.
§.29. In the framework of the above arguments, we made no reference to the concept of nation-state, because the theory is not based on a transient form. We analysed the working of two fundamental laws that keeps capitalism in full nelson: the law of equalisation of the rate of profit and the law of the tendency of the rate of average profit to fall. The theory of capitalist mode of production was not developed from the analysis of the economy of a nation-state 5, it was developed as a critique of political economy which was then universally accepted as a general economic theory. For this reason, Marxism is naturally universal, it is not derived from a non-global concept.
§.30. This is the reason why the historical constitution of workers as a class having their own class consciousness means transcending the conditions of exploitation imposed on them within the framework of their own factory, their own sector, their own country and recognizing the entire capitalist class as their enemy, not just their boss who is merely the representative of the entire capitalist class defended by all the states. Let’s hear out Marx who plays the same tune:
“In each particular sphere of production, the individual capitalist, as well as the capitalists as a whole, take direct part in the exploitation of the total working-class by the totality of capital and in the degree of that exploitation, not only out of general class sympathy, but also for direct economic reasons. For … the average rate of profit depends on the intensity of exploitation of the sum total of labour by the sum total of capital.” 6
Even obliquely, this argument can be valid also for the climate crisis and an activist can present it to his/her listener. For instance, one can say that it is not this or that capitalist who participates in global warming for his individual profit, but it is the entire capitalist class who reaps collectively the benefits from it.
§.31. Global capitalism, defined as global by its level of integration and as state monopoly capitalism by its functioning in practice, has very important political and organizational consequences for the working-class movement and the climate movement. Their strategy and organisations must take them into account and respond accordingly and suitable to the global environment.
§.32. Firstly, the ideology of the adversary has become one single monolithic block: Neo-liberalism. Various programs with less and less diversification are all based on neo-liberalism. Keynesian economics, the programs of social-democratic parties, statism etc. are no longer viable choices. With some nuances, all bourgeois parties defend neo-liberalism. If they didn’t represent the interests of different capitalists, they could all unite in a single party as its different fractions. The politicians and the executives of corporations change often places. Thus, none of the bourgeois parties is an ally, any grassroots movement must organise itself independently of these parties. When inevitable, to form coalitions with them is only a tactical move. To participate in popular fronts formed with parties calling themselves socialist is possible provided that such fronts allow the inner struggle of hegemony without disintegrating themselves. If not, such a participation reduces the sweep of the movement.
§.33. Secondly, in all the countries the income distribution has become ridiculously unequal so much so that the electoral programs, already deprived of essence, are reduced to demand money from the state for the people. In practice, no all-around progressive program proved itself applicable for a long period. For this reason, the ideal election tactic for the working-class movement and the climate movement is to try to create favourable external conditions for mass mobilisation and mass action. So, the choice in the elections means replacing a strong willpower with a weak willpower at the head of government, which will facilitate the fight by facilitating the environment of mass mobilisation.
§.34. Thirdly, the organisation forms inherited from the industrial epoch of capitalism based on factory must be rejected, new ones must take their place. This is why the classical labor syndicates successful yesterday weakened and lost their appeal today. The same is true for the political parties of the workers. Not adapted to the information age capitalism, they collapsed.
§.35. Finally, we must remember that because of the ideological decay of capitalism, a highly infectious germ called post-truth propaganda has infected the political sphere. Like modernism and post-modernism were given equal status in life, telling the truth or lying are more and more considered having the same right to existence, without any consideration to ethics. This means that, simply telling the truth and insisting on the scientific data is not enough to combat the lies and deception, they must be completed by successful action defending the public interest.
§.36. Marx said ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win’ and he finished with ‘Proletarians of all countries unite!’ and today entire left says ‘Workers of the world unite!’. Marx was not saying that the workers of a such and such nation-state should unite against the national bourgeoisie of that state. The First International, like the subsequent Internationals, was truly international. Marx was calling how many workers to action? Obviously, he was not interested in numbers to justify his anticipation. In fact, in today’s global world, instead of the term ‘international’, which implies ‘between nations’, one can use the term ‘transnationalism’ that means ‘above and beyond nationalism’.
*
So, we think this is the correct approach to adopt for any progressive movement. Even more so today than yesterday. As to the climate crisis in particular, it is even more global than global capitalism. ‘One earth-one atmosphere’ has a profoundly deeper planetary sense than ‘one world-one market’. Plain survival has an ontological priority over a better survival.
Planet is permanent, capitalism is transitory.
***
Coşkun Adalı is author of several books published in Turkey, mainly on capitalism and world capitalist system. He was a lecturer on economic history in Paris University for eleven years. He is an independent multidisciplinary researcher in social sciences.
Also published on the author’s personal blog: https://coskunadali.home.blog/2024/10/06/crucial-choices/
Footnotes
1 Let us remember that a nation-state (État-nation) is a sovereign political unit where the state, a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory, and the nation, a community based on a common ethnic and/or constructed identity, are congruent.
2 Michel Beaud, l’Économie mondiale dans les années quatre-vingt, Édition La Découvert, Paris, 1989, p.70
3 Today due to the advent in technology, robotics, and Automatic Guided Vehicle systems, new cars come off assembly line considerably faster than ever. Toyota Official Headquarters says they make about 3,360,000 cars in a year. If we divide that up, they are popping out 13,800 cars per working day. They can make about 575 cars per hour, while the useful life of a car is about 10 years. The contrast between the offer and demand is evident.
4 We will not go into the details of the conversion of surplus value into profit, the transformation of the value into price, first through the transformation of the value into the price of production and then through the transformation of the price of production into the market price. For the classical analyses see Karl Marx, CAPITAL – Volume Three / PART II: CONVERSION OF PROFIT INTO AVERAGE PROFIT, CHAPTER X : Equalisation of general rate of profit (shorter title), pp. 173-199, PART III : THE LAW OF THE TENDENCY OF THE RATE OF PROFIT TO FALL, CHAPTER XIII: The law as such pp. 211-231, CHAPTER XIV: Counteracting influences pp. 232-240, and CHAPTER XV: Exposition of the internal contradictions of the law, pp. 241-266, Lawrence & Wishart, London; 1959)
5 Let us note that the USA is not a nation-state, neither China, nor most of the decolonized African countries. Ex-USSR was not born out a nation-state. The Europe is a collection of weakened nation-states in the process of withering away into a subsystem which will eventually become United States of Europe.
6 Karl Marx, CAPITAL, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1959, pp. 196-197.
