e ) Competition
 Competition takes place among the various enterprises : each fights against the others on the market, each fights to corner the market. We have shown how the various aspects of human activity got separated. The exchange relation increases the division of society into trades, which in turn helps the development of the commodity system. However, as can still be seen nowadays, even in advanced countries, in the countryside for instance, there is no real competition among activities which are separate but stably divided among the baker, the shoemaker, etc. Capitalism is not only a division of society into various trades, but above all a permanent struggle between the various components of industry ( and also of the unproductive sector; see below ). Each sum of value exists only against the others. What ideology calls selfishness and the struggle of all against all, is the indispensable complement of a world where one has to fight to be able to sell. Thus economic violence, and armed violence as its consequence, are integral parts of the capitalist system. Competition had positive effects in the past : it broke the limits of feudal regulations and corporative constraints, and allowed capital to invade the world. It has now become a source of waste, leading both to the development of useless or secondary production the valorisation of which is quicker, or to hinder important production, if supply and demand conflict with each other. Competition is the separation of productive systems into autonomous centres which are rival poles ( punkte ), each seeking to increase its respective sum of value. Neither "organisation" nor "planning" nor any sort of control can bring this to an end. State power and "people's power" are equally incapable of solving this problem. The motive force of competition is not the freedom of individuals, nor even of the capitalists, but the freedom of capital. It can only live by devouring itself. The form destroys its content to survive as a form. It destroys its material components ( living labour and past labour ) to survive as a sum of value valorising itself. Each of the various competing capitals has a particular profit rate. But capitals move from one branch to another, looking for the highest possible rate of profit. They move to the most profitable branch and neglect the others. When this branch is saturated with capital, its profitability decreases and capitals move to another branch ( this dynamic is modified, but not abolished, by the establishment of monopolies ). This constant process results in the stabilisation of the profit rate around an average rate, in a given society at a definite moment. Each capital tends to be rewarded, not according to the profit rate it realises in its own enterprise, but according to the average social rate, in proportion to the sum of value invested in the enterprise. So each capital does not exploit its own workers, but the whole capital exploits the whole working class. In the movement of capitals, capital acts and reveals itself as a social power, dominating all society, and thus acquires coherence in spite of the competition which opposes it to itself. It gets unified and becomes a social force. [12] It is a relatively homogeneous totality in its conflicts with the proletariat or with other capitalist ( national ) units. It organises the relations and needs of the whole society according to its interests. This mechanism exists in every country : capital constitutes the State and the nation against other national capitals, but also against the proletariat ( see below ). The opposition of capitalist states turns war into the ultimate means of resolving problems of competition among national capitals. Nothing changes so long as there are production units trying to increase their respective amounts of value. What happens if the State ( "democratic," "workers'," "proletarian," etc. ) takes all enterprises under its control, while keeping them as enterprises ? Either State enterprises obey the law of profit and value, and nothing changes. Or they do not obey it without destroying it, and then everything goes wrong. [13] Inside the enterprise, organisation is rational : capital imposes its despotism on the workers. Outside, on the market, where each enterprise meets the others, order exists only as the permanent and periodical suppression of disorder, accompanied by crises and destruction. Only communism can destroy this organised anarchy, by suppressing the enterprise as a separate entity. Notes [12] The dynamics of the rate of profit is shown in the third volume of Capital ( in the first three parts; see Chapter 15 ). Also see "Leninism and the Ultra-Left - C) The Law of Value." [13] Engels, Selected Writings, pp. 217-218 : "The modern State ( ... ) is ( ... ) the ideal personification of the total national capital." |