Recursos de Elevación de Actuados en las Fiscalías Penales

Marx's theory of value explains the origin of capitalist profit and how the dynamic of capital accumulation takes particular forms. Value theory applies to a system of exchange, where the products of labour take the form of commodities. Capitalism, the historically specific form of organising social production in which the products of labour are commodities and in which labourers work for the profit of the capitalists, the owners of the means of production, is also the one in which commodity production and exchange is most generalised. The value of commodities is a function of the socially necessary labour-time that went into their

production, both directly in terms of the new expenditure of 'living' labour by the workers and indirectly as a result of the value transferred to the product by the means of production. The profit of the capitalist employers depends on the amount of surplus value produced by the workers, which, in turn, results from the time that they work after reproducing the value of their own labour power.

This leads to the definition of productive labour in Marxist theory: the labour that produces value and surplus value for capitalism. Marx's analysis in Capital is focused on the dynamic of this process, and Volumes 1 and 2 deal almost exclusively with industrial capital because this 'is the only mode of existence of capital in which not only the appropriation of surplus value, or surplus product, but simultaneously its creation is a function of capital' (Marx, 1974b, Chapter 1, p. 57). Industrial capital is, then, the most general and most important form of capital, and the one that is considered to employ productive workers. Not all productive labourers are directly employed by industrial capital, however. One such group of productive workers is involved in the transport and packaging of commodities, since this function can also add to their use-value (Marx, 1974b, Chapter 6, pp. 151-153). Another group includes producers of use-values that are not material commodities who nevertheless work for a capitalist company, for example in private hospitals and education (Marx, 1974a, Chapter 16, p. 477; Marx, 1969, Addenda 12, Section H, pp. 410-411). It is not the concrete, 'use value' form of labour that determines whether or not it is productive for capital, but the social form in which it is organised.

Productive labour under capitalism can only include those workers employed by capitalist companies, but not all such workers are productive. Many workers employed by capitalist companies do not produce value and surplus value. These are principally the ones operating in what Marx calls the 'sphere of circulation'. One area of this is the selling or buying of commodities, including the accounting processes, as in the case of those working for commercial capital. Another important area covers the workers in the more specifically financial sphere, providing loan capital so that others may do the producing, or performing other services in the exchange of titles to the ownership (and use) of money and other assets.

This includes banks, pension funds, asset managers and other financial companies. However necessary these functions may be for the operation of the capitalist market system, and whatever profits the workers in these occupations may bring to their capitalist employer, via mark ups, fees or interest payments, workers in the sphere of circulation do not produce new value (hence, no surplus value either) for the system as a whole. Neither are the costs of these operations transferred to the values of commodities. Their work is not part of the production by capital of use-values as commodities. The capital invested in the commercial and financial spheres is part of society's total capital advanced, but all the running costs, depreciation and

profits registered are effectively deductions from the value, essentially the surplus value, produced elsewhere. Similarly, while these activities may have the effect of leading to a greater output of value and surplus value in the capitalist system, the higher values are still the result of the productive sector's output.

Another group of workers is not employed by private capital at all, but is nevertheless important to note briefly: public sector workers in local and central government. They have become increasingly important in the post-1945 period, along with the expansion of state expenditures and taxation. This is a big topic to analyse in its own right, and it falls outside this inquiry into the role of finance. However, from a value perspective, public expenditure is largely financed through taxation and it is a drain on how much of the total surplus value produced may be used for further private capitalist production. This is so even if some of the expenditures may also benefit sections of private capital.

Value expansion, or making profit, is the aim of capitalist commodity production.

Competition puts pressure on individual capitalist companies to cut their costs as a means of raising profits, something that applies to all kinds of capitalist company, including

commercial and financial ones. Even though the latter companies produce no value or surplus value, that fact need not concern them. Their profits can still rise if they reduce their unit costs. Cost reduction can only be done on a systematic basis by raising productivity, although there will also be attempts to force input prices and wages lower when possible. Given that there are usually economies of scale and scope in production, this also tends to lead to the domination of the market by the bigger capitalists. A greater output usually enables lower unit costs, higher revenues enable purchases of more efficient fixed capital and large-scale buying of raw materials is often less costly per unit, as is the transport and marketing of a greater mass of products, etc. This is again true not only for companies in the productive sphere, but also for those in commerce and finance. Pressure on companies to compete and expand profits also implies the need to expand markets beyond local or national boundaries as more buyers of the higher volumes of output are sought, so expanding the world market.

Marx explains the logic behind the growth of the world market, but he does not discuss the way it operates in Capital, except to give some brief, marginal comments to note some issues that were to be dealt with in a later volume discussing 'competition' (see below).

Instead, at a higher level of abstraction, he discusses the mechanism of value production and derives the laws of the system as a whole. In these can be found some key concepts for the current discussion, but they are ones which need to be developed further in order to clarify the relationship between capitalist exploitation and imperialism.

The first issue is the formation of the average rate of profit. Here, Marx explains how there is a tendency for the prices of commodities to diverge systematically from their

embodied values representing the amount of socially necessary, or abstract, labour they contain. This is because, under capitalism, commodities are exchanged as products of capital, not as simple commodities that contain so much labour time. Capital is invested wherever the rate of profit is highest, and the advance of capital to produce commodities will tend to result in a single, average rate of profit across the economy. Since unpaid labour is the source of surplus value, and a given amount of capital advanced in different sectors of production will employ different amounts of living labour compared to constant capital, this creates a

discrepancy between the value embodied in commodities and the average market price (price of production) at which the commodities will tend to exchange (Marx, 1974c, Chapter 9). The result is a transfer of (surplus) value from the sectors with the lower compositions of capital to the ones with the higher compositions via the difference in prices. However, values and prices of production continue to be driven by developments in productivity and accumulation.³

The total surplus value of the capitalist system determines the size of the total profit, but the divergence of prices of production from the prices that would directly reflect values brings about a redistribution of the surplus value between the different capitalists in a way that tends to equalise profit rates. If prices of production were not sufficiently higher or lower than values, then profit rates would diverge. This would induce a shift of capitalist investment and production from the lower profit sector to the higher profit sector. Market prices then move to bring about levels of prices that tend to result in equal profit rates.

This mechanism is often used to explain how richer capitalist countries or companies get transfers of value from poorer ones, assuming that the companies from the richer countries have a higher composition of capital (Callinicos, 2009; Carchedi, 2001; Emmanuel, 1972).

This is based upon more socially necessary labour time being exchanged for less in trade, given the formation of prices of production in the world market. However, although valid as an explanation of how one might 'give' some labour time to another for free, this is no different from general capitalist market operations and so should not be considered a distinguishing feature of an imperialist world economy, one in which the world economy is divided between a small group of major powers and the rest. Simply relying upon this mechanism would effectively be saying that there is no economic substance to imperialism, and that imperialism is just capitalism plus the military and political power of the rich countries.

3 This is not the place to discuss the wider ramifications of Marx's treatment of the so-called

transformation problem, for which see Fine and Saad-Filho 2004 (Chapter 10). Chapter 8 of this book also discusses the different compositions of capital - the technical, value and organic compositions - that are not discussed in this summary.

A separate mechanism, but one related to that based on prices of production, occurs in Marx's discussion of companies that have a better than average market productivity. Here a company has lower costs than its competitors in the same sector. Then it may sell at the same price as others, but it will realise a 'surplus-profit' (Marx, 1974c, Chapter 10, p. 198). This also implies that its selling price for the commodity could be lower than the average market price, so it can gain market share but still earn a rate of profit higher than its competitors.

Competitive pressures will nevertheless tend to force others to follow its technical lead or to make their own advances and its competitive advantages will tend to be eliminated. Only insofar as the better techniques are not generalised will the company remain in a favourable position. But its position is nevertheless based upon superior productivity, not upon any form of market privilege, still less upon one that could be put under the heading of an imperial privilege.

The previous mechanisms assume that capital can flow freely between different sectors of the economy. If there are barriers to new capital moving into the higher profitability sector, then the averaging of the profit rate will be impeded, perhaps for a very long time.

Marx briefly notes the possibility that monopolies might 'stand in the way' of an averaging process when discussing the extra profits available from investing in the colonies of the major countries (Marx, 1974c, Chapter 14, p. 238). He also notes how some sectors of industry may have such a high organic composition of capital, and demand such a large scale of investment – for example, railways – that the form of investment in these sectors, principally via the stock market, means that this area of investment is separated from the rest of the capitalist economy, and its profit rate, assumed to be lower, does not enter into the averaging process because it is received as a form of interest payment (Marx, 1974c, Chapter 14, p. 240).⁴

Other factors to allow for here would include different values of labour power and rates of surplus in the world economy. Marx notes the use of 'slaves, coolies, etc' in the colonies of the major powers, and that 'different national rates of profit are mostly based on different national rates of surplus value', giving an example of a higher rate of surplus-value in the more developed country (Marx, 1974c, Chapter 8, p. 151). This illustrates the status of Volume 3 of Capital as a stage in the (incomplete) analysis of capitalism, not the conclusion.

These subjects, as well as the issue of paying wages below the value of labour power, were to have been part of the analysis of competition, separate from that in the three volumes of Capital (Marx, 1974c, Chapter 14, p. 235). For the same reasons, Marx's analysis in Capital was based on an abstract, universal capitalist economy. Although it dealt with the forms of capital that emerge, it did not systematically deal with the different economic status of countries and their relationships to each other.

4 This topic raises many issues and is discussed further in Chapter 3.

When considering how further to develop a Marxist analysis of these issues, there is the likelihood that something else has an influence over the profitability of a company in the capitalist system that is separate from, though possibly related to, its productivity and competitive advantages. That is the topic for sections 2.3 to 2.6, which will discuss different aspects of the 'imperial' set of factors that generate privileges for certain national powers – and their companies – in the world economy.