What, Me Unorthodox?
Some comrades of mine have taken my essay on Musk and Tesla as evidence that I have lost the Marxist plot. I must insist upon noting the resurgence and increasing import of slavery and similar noncapitalistic relations in the United States economy, which is directly related to the two-front “attack” on the United States, from the South and from the East, i.e., from the narcotraficantes and the “Russian” mafia.
I want to clarify the value relations here.
If drug money is supporting the value of Silicon Valley businesses, and Silicon Valley businesses are the reason the United States economy remains the focus of the world’s investment capital, there are a couple of theoretical problems.
The businesses are not economic. They are not economic enterprises anymore. It doesn’t matter how much surplus value the businesses create, because they are not receiving capital on the basis of their profitability. They are receiving foreign direct investment in the form of drug money because they are able and willing to launder it. They are serving as a store of value. And they are receiving investment capital on the secondary market because they are either large megacap stocks or large-enough private ventures with “growth”.
There are two things going on here.
Primitive Accumulation
The first is primitive accumulation. One of Loren Goldner’s greatest insights is that primitive accumulation can be and has been ongoing. In capital circulation, money does not know where it came from. Debt doesn’t know how its interest payments were earned. Goods and values can enter the system “for free,” e.g., perhaps under duress, as in old-school colonialism.
Concretely, here, the actual enslavement and degradation of the world working class is being invested into the businesses. Not regular old capitalist death on the installment plan, but present-value addiction, extortion, torture and murder. That money capital is actually negative variable capital. Real live present-value destruction. So, at best, no matter what the businesses do, the economy must be shrinking. It is financed directly with death.
“Free inputs” are more and more important in contemporary political economy because of
The Impossibilization of Normal Commercial Activity
Secondary investment capital is being allocated outside of value relations. This past Christmas I kept reading about how companies were requesting customers not to bother returning misplaced orders or duplicate orders or wrong orders. Just ask for the right one and keep them all. This happened to me over Christmas 2022, with a high-value furniture item. Of course the reason is plain: transportation costs would eat their profits if they took the wrong orders back. It is cheaper to let the customer keep more than the customer paid for than to take back the wrong item.
The cost of doing business is too high to do business correctly. Think about that, for a moment, please, Marxists. The cost of doing business is too high to do business correctly.
Companies are doing something other than making commodities to realize surplus value as profit in their sale. They do that sometimes, but something else is happening.
“Punctuated Equilibrium”, or State-Managed Debt Finance in the Context of Primitive Accumulation
That something else is competition for market share, also known as “growth”. This “growth” is not in Capital nor any of the old textbooks, from what I recall. “Growth” is valuable in this real-world political economy where the state steps in every crisis to refinance the debts of the largest enterprises. That is what the investment capital is allocated for. To be refinanced next crisis, and to re-enter the game next cycle, with fewer competitors. This is where the game is played, where the “profit” is realized, in contemporary political economy.
Both these have nothing to do with regular profits or rates of exploitation or organic composition or anything like that. The point is that the US government has decided to fake economic relations, by force, by fiat, by periodical crisis issuance of central bank debt, and the rest of the world is willing to go along with this, because nothing has been able to restart “normal” capital accumulation since the outbreak of the crisis in the 1970s. This is perfect cover for the two-pronged blowback Viking imperialist assault taking place before our eyes, as the United States government is corrupted, its economy is devoured, its people are enslaved and entrapped, and no one bats an eyelash. “Our” leaders set the stage so well over the past 50 years that one can hardly tell the difference between the new boss and the old boss.
This is extremely perverse, yes, and not only is liquified addiction and spiritual death financing the highest of high-tech businesses and the most artificial of intelligences, but Los Angeles school PTAs are enlisting prostitutes to raise money for books and school supplies. Think about that, and then talk to me about what is Marxist or not.
That is our real political economy today.
Trump Again? Why Not? And Who Cares?
In North America, in 2024, the state is split between Democrats allied to varying degrees with narcotraficantes, and Trump’s Republicans, who are allied more or less with the “Russian” mafia. This is why neither side makes progress on the “border crisis” or on Ukraine. Republicans blow their racist dog whistle and pretend to be America First. Democrats act like they want democracy in “Russia” and like they still want to welcome people to this nation of immigrants. Neither side will argue honestly why it opposes the other, and neither side wants to defeat the other. It’s that old mutual blackmail again, among the US ruling class this time. Those aligned with the cartels are stronger at the moment, but Trump will probably win the election, and things may change quickly.
Needless to say, it is our job—I mean the workers of the world, where you are right now, if you work a job or need a wage and you don’t feel like a boss—to clean this mess up, regardless of who is in office or what they say. The hour is getting late.