Study Circle 15 of 2019: Why does profit exist?

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Dear comrades and friends,


DYFI CUC organised the fifteenth study circle of the year yesterday, and we had the most intense discussions we’ve had in a while. We continued reading Value, Price and Profit and completed Chapters 8-11. 


The chapters elaborate on the difference between labour and labouring power, and on how the appropriation of surplus value reproduces the capitalist as a capitalist, and the worker as a worker.


Marx explains that the entirety of profit is the unpaid part of the labourer’s value addition. Industrial profit, rent, and interest are only ways to distribute surplus value amongst employing capitalists, landlords and moneylenders. Importantly, wages and profit change in opposite ways: when general wages increase, the general rate of profit declines, and vice versa.


In other words, profit exists because wages are less than value addition; and so, commodities are sold at prices equivalent to their value, not above it. 
We discussed the value added by management, and whether capitalists add value to production by taking risks – we talked about how they are able to take the risk only because they have the capital, and this capital has been accumulated through enclosure and capture of resources.


We also spoke of how digital platforms, along with venture capital, fit into this analysis, and from whom the surplus value is extracted in these businesses. 
Next week we will finish the remaining chapters.


Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee,

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 14 of 2019: Value, price, and profit

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DYFI CUC organised a few study circles in this interim, but we unfortunately do not have updates – hence we are counting today’s study circle as the fourteenth of this year. After having completed Wage Labour and Capital, today we read the first six chapters of Value, Price and Profit.


The book consists of speeches delivered by Marx at the First International, in response to John Weston’s arguments against a general increase in wages. Weston posited that if workers fought for a general increase in wages, the increase would simply be transferred by the capitalist to commodity prices. An increase in commodity prices would mean that the real wages of the workers would remain the same, given that their purchasing power would decrease.


Marx shows that this reasoning is based on several flawed assumptions. That wages determine prices is not a given, and that a certain general level of profit is required for production to continue is also not. Weston is unclear about whether there is a universal economic law about the level at which general wages should remain, or whether this depends on the will of the capitalist – if the former, the law is not presented and defended; if the latter, wages can be made to change against the will of the capitalist as well. In any event, there is a constant downward pressure on wages, that does not affect commodity prices in the opposite direction – meaning that the rates of profit and rent change, are not cosmically determined. Marx shows that, in fact, a general increase in wages would mean that either that commodity prices remain unchanged as the rate of profit declines, or that an increased demand for necessities and decreased demand for luxuries causes a temporary rise in the prices of necessities, which is fixed as capital moves to increase the supply of necessities to match demand. Marx uses historical examples to validate this.


At the heart of Weston’s argument is an erroneous theory of value, and the idea that profit arises at the point of exchange. Marx shows how this is impossible, and develops the labour theory of value. 


Next week we will continue reading the remaining chapters. 


Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee,

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 13 of 2019: Wage, Labour and Capital

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DYFI-CUC organised the thirteenth study circle of this year yesterday. We read the first five chapters of ‘Wage Labour and Capital’ (WLC) by Karl Marx — a pamphlet introducing some basic concepts in Marx’s critique of classical political economy.


It consists of lectures delivered by Marx before the German Workingmen’s Club of Brussels in 1847, and was first published in 1849 as an (incomplete) series of articles in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, the German newspaper published by Marx between 1848-49. 


WLC (as retrospectively edited by Engels after Marx’s death to conform to Marx’s ideas as they had changed and crystallised in later decades) begins by explaining what wages are. It is commonly assumed that wages are what the capitalist employer pays a worker in return for a certain amount of labour for a certain amount of time (time-wages) or for a certain task (piece-wage). In other words, classical political economy assumes that the capitalist buys the labour of the worker and pays wages in return. 


However, the text clarifies that what the capitalist buys is not labour, but the labour-power of the worker. It goes on to explain that labour-power is a commodity — just like any other commodity that is produced for the purpose of exchange and thus has an exchange-value. This exchange value estimated in money is called its price. 


Wages, therefore, are simply the price of labour-power.


Next, Marx talks about the factors determining the price of any commodity — competition between sellers, competition between buyers, competition between buyers and sellers, and the laws of supply and demand under capitalism. However, the text makes it clear that a price can be said to have ‘fallen’ or ‘risen’ only in relation to the cost of production of the commodity — supply and demand merely cause the price to fluctuate either above (rise) or below (fall) this cost of production.  The price of a commodity expresses (in the form of money) the ratio or proportion in which one commodity can be exchanged for another commodity. If the price of a one commodity rises, then the price of some other commodity can be understood to have fallen in proportion to the rise in price of the first commodity. 


The cost of production of commodity is determined by raw materials, wear and tear, etc. as well as the labour-time necessary for the manufacture of the commodity.


Just like the price of any other commodity, the price of labour-power — or wages — is determined by the cost of production of the labour-power. 
This cost of the production of labour-power consists of the minimum necessary costs for the maintenance of the worker (social reproduction) so that the worker can continue to sell her labour-power, besides the cost of training the worker, if there is any.


Next, Marx talks about the nature and growth of capital. Capital, he says, consists of the raw materials, the instruments of labour and the means of subsistence that are used in production of new raw materials, new instruments and new means of subsistence. However, all of these components of capital are products of labour over periods of time in the past — or ‘accumulated labour’. 


But this accumulated labour becomes capital only when worked upon by ‘living’ labour (that is, when the exchange of labour-power takes place), which preserves and multiplies the exchange value of this accumulated labour, producing yet more capital.


Next week, we shall continue reading Wage Labour and Capital, and finish the remaining four chapters.


Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee,

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 12 of 2019 – Communism cannot be learnt by rote

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Dear comrades and friends,


DYFI CUC organised the twelfth study circle of this year today. We read three short texts to refresh our understanding of Marxism.
We first read Lenin’s The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism. Lenin talks of Marxism as the successor of German philosophy, English political economy, and French socialism. The three component parts are then philosophical materialism, the labour theory of value, and class struggle. 


To read further on materialism, dialectics, and the accusations levelled against Marxists about being metaphysical, we read the first part of Stalin’s Anarchism or Socialism?. This is a defence of Marxism against Anarchism, and also a simple explanation of how Marx took the dialectical method but not the metaphysical theory from Hegel.


We then moved on to reading Lenin’s The Tasks of the Youth Leagues. Lenin addresses this to the youth of the USSR, tasked, as a generation growing up under socialism, with building communism. Lenin expounds on what communist morality means, how class struggle continues under socialism, and what education under socialism ought to be like. The central point is that communism cannot be taught through its conclusions or slogans; we still need to learn of all accumulated human knowledge and derive communism for ourselves through learning and practice. In other words, communism cannot be learnt by rote.


As usual, do send us your thoughts and suggestions, including suggestions for reading material!


Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee,

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 11 of 2019 – Caste, Class and Property Relations

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DYFI CUC organised the eleventh study circle of this year today. Last week we had started our readings on caste and class, and this week (on Ambedkar Jayanti!) we continued. We read nearly all of BT Ranadive’s Caste, Class and Property Relations. 

The essay has had three primary strands so far:


1) Caste in feudalism and colonialism; how the existence of caste was beneficial for the British

2) Caste as understood and grappled with by the leaders of the freedom struggle, and how their class position meant that they did not seek an annihilation of caste, but moved through cultural revivalism (even support for the caste system) and merely social reform. Yet, they were able to build a mass movement under bourgeois leadership. 

3) Phule and Ambedkar’s complete rejection of caste, and how the project was co-opted by feudal and capitalist interest, and thus did not reach its logical conclusion in agrarian revolution and upending land relations. Periyar’s life is an example of what happens when the anti-caste movement delinks itself from the anti-imperialist movement.


Ranadive also speaks of how the communist party was the only party to link the question of caste with that of land relations; how the formation of new classes through industrialisation meant that the unity of the toiling masses was impeded by the existence of caste. He stresses the importance of attacking casteist ideology, and the folly of thinking that caste will disappear when class disappears. 


At the same time, without a change in the production relations, caste can never be fully annihilated. In Ranadive’s own words on the Congress leadership,


“Unable to think of a basic liquidation of land relations the national bourgeoisie adopted social reforms as their watchword in the struggle for national unity. Education, social mixing, inter-caste dinners, statement in public meetings that ‘We are Indians first and last’ beyond this the class alliance of the bourgeois leaders did not permit the national movement to go.”


Our discussions focused on the land redistribution that was supposed to take place in India, how there never was substantial land redistribution, how in places like Bengal, where it did take place, the incidence of caste atrocities was lower. We spoke of the changing nature of the demand for reservations in the background of the public sector being throttled. Upper caste resentment is being weaponised to divert attention from the fact that jobs and public education are themselves receding. 

Next week, we will complete this essay, and then vote on what to read next. 

Study Circle 10 of 2019 – Caste and Class

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DYFI CUC organised the tenth study circle of this year today. Many of us wanted to read more about the left approach to caste, and so we started by reading Anand Teltumbde’s essay called “The Caste and Class Dialectic – The Way In and the Way Out” from a compilation called Republic of Caste.


Teltumbde lays out the differences between the Marxist and Ambedkarite understandings of caste, its emergence, and strategies to annihilate it. His main point, however, is that a unified understanding of caste and class will serve both communist and anti-caste movements. 


Teltumbde charts Ambedkar’s attempts to organise people on the basis of class (such as through the Independent Labour Party) and how he did not have much success. He points out that Ambedkar’s views on Marxism had two influences: one, the Fabian Socialists in England, who preferred gradual reform over revolution; and two, the trade union movement in Bombay, which in some cases supported untouchability being practiced in factories and mills.


Here, discussions led to the emergence of many examples before the aforesaid practices in Bombay, where communist-led trade unions had mobilised against untouchability and other casteist practices, both in Bombay and in the rest of the country. Therefore Ambedkar’s Mahad satyagraha, for example, was also about the assertion of the humanity of Dalits, something that Teltumbde thinks Indian communists arrogantly dismissed. 


Teltumbde also speaks about how Marxists have taken the base-superstructure distinction too literally, and that caste needs to find its place in both, and not just in the superstructure as an institution that will die when capitalism is smashed. Here, we had some differences with Teltumbde on theory; we talked about how there was a dialectical relationship between the base and the superstructure. Teltumbde’s thrust in the article, however, was that Ambedkar’s “pragmatic” approach was reactive and Marx’s scientific approach was the correct long-term one. With that background, Teltumbde believes a meeting point between Marx and Ambedkar is necessary in India.


After much discussion – which we wish we could reproduce in its entirety here – what we took from the article was that communists had engaged insufficiently with the question of caste, and that had done a disservice to the movement, and had ceded ground to solely identitarian movements. Next week, we will read BT Ranadive’s Caste, Class and Property Relations to understand the relationship between the three.

 
Revolutionary Greetings

Central Unit Committee,

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 9 of 2019 – Alliances, democracy, war

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DYFI-CUC organised the ninth study circle of the year today, and we finally finished reading Emile Burns’ What Is Marxism?


We read Chapter 8, A Guide To Action. The chapter emphasises the point that Marxism is not solely an academic discipline, but is meant to provide the knowledge and method to guide action towards a higher stage of production. We discussed about how that transition is not automatically made, and how suffering caused by capitalism does not by itself lead to a revolution.


The chapter discusses the Marxist answers to three questions: Which classes should ally against old systems, and when? When should communists participate in Parliamentary democracy? What kinds of wars are just wars?


The general answer is that it depends on the circumstances and on one question: do the alliances, Parliamentary participation, and war further working class interests? Even if the question is simple, the analysis has to be based on a close, often contentious, examination of circumstances.


We discussed what this means for whether Left parties in India should ally with the Congress. We talked about an essay by PMS Grewal that says that the question of this alliance is dependent on whether the Indian state is fascist or fascism is imminent. He concludes that fascism is not imminent in India, and that’s why the energies of the Left parties are better spent building an independent left movement. However, we also acknowledged that if an alliance is made, it would not necessarily be opportunistic, but likely based on a conclusion that fascism is, in fact, imminent.


We also spoke of technological monopolies and platform capitalism, and how this changes which classes should now ally against imperialism, which itself is fast-changing – big traders, for example, also find themselves threatened now.


On war, we talked about how Lenin, during the first world war, advised the working classes of the warring countries to use the inter-imperialist crisis to overthrow the ruling classes of their respective countries instead of killing fellow workers from other countries. However, during the second world war, Burns explains, the situation warranted the working classes of the allied countries to contribute to the war effort of their own ruling classes, because the fascist advance would be a setback to working class interests and liberation struggles worldwide.


For the next study circle, we voted on what topic to read about. We wanted to read about the Marxist approach to caste, the fundamentals of Marxist economics, the agrarian crisis, and the basics of Marxist philosophy. We decided to read the works of EMS Namboodiripad and BT Ranadive on caste, followed by Marx’s Wage, Labour and Capital.


Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 8 of 2019 – Marxism and Science

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In the weekly study circle organised by DYFI-CUC today, we studied and discussed Chapter 7 of ‘What is Marxism’ by Emile Burns, titled ‘The Marxist View of Nature’.
This chapter is of relevance to social science and political economy because Marxism is a theoretical approach based not on abstract moral principles about what a society ought to be, but one borne out of a careful study of the actually existing societies and their evolution. And actual societies, and the human beings in it, do not exist as entities independent of nature but as a part of it, and governed very much by its laws.


In opposition to the philosophy of idealism – which operates on the assumption that the material world exists only inside a human consciousness and has no independent existence outside of it – Marxism is deeply rooted in the materialist philosophy, which sees matter (the material word) as existing independently and prior to human conscious, which in itself is a product of the evolution of the former.    

And this evolution is not a linear process, but one which has a ‘dialectical’ nature, where the existence of a complex set of interrelations generate contradictions when quantitative changes occur to different variables. These contradictions are then resolved with a radical qualitative change – i.e a revolutionary transformation. Thus, “dialectical materialism” forms the central root of the marxist approach.  


Citing a scientific example, Burns says, “while the temperature is being raised the water remains water, with all the general characteristics of water, but the amount of heat in it is increasing. Similarly, while the temperature is being reduced the water remains water, but the amount of heat in it is decreasing. However, at a certain point in this process of change.. it is no longer water, but steam or ice. This feature of reality is particularly evident in chemistry.”     


Drawing a parallel to make the point that such is the nature of development in human societies also, Burns adds: “In human society, gradual changes take place over a long period without any fundamental changes in the character of society; then a break takes pace, there is a revolution, the old form of society is destroyed and a new form comes into existence and begins its own process of development. Thus within feudal society, which was production for local consumption, the buying and selling of surplus products led to the production of things for the market and so on to the beginnings of capitalist production. All of this was a gradual process of development; but at a certain point the rising capitalist class came into conflict with the feudal order, overthrew it, and transformed the whole character of production; capitalist society took the place of feudalism and began a more tempestuous development.”


This development, which created the working class, has reached a phase where the contradiction has been generated between this new class the capitalist system created and the bourgeoisie, whose revolution instated the capitalist system in place of the overthrown feudalism. The irresolvable nature of this contradiction is what throws open the road to socialist revolution, which brings about a radical transformation by demolishing capitalism and replacing it will a socialist set up.


For a more through understanding about the relationship between the laws governing nature (the material world) and the working and evolution of human societies, consult the ‘Dialectics of Nature’ by Friedrich Engels.


In the next study circle, we will read the final and the most important chapter, titled “A Guide to Action”, and finally summarise our reading of the book. Anyone interested in joining us in our studies is warmly welcome.


Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 7 of 2019 – How do we build socialism?

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DYFI-CUC organised the seventh study circle of this year. Today, we really put to the test everything we have learnt about historical materialism so far. We read Chapter 6 of What Is Marxism: Socialist Society.


The chapter speaks of what socialist society is likely to look like. It says that imagining a socialist society is not about taking all our favourite utopian ideas and combining them, but rather thinking of how an economy organised along socialist lines will realistically look. Socialist society, after all, emerges from capitalist society, with all its vestiges. The transition to the higher form of socialism – communism – will be impacted by these vestiges.


We had wide-ranging discussions in the course of reading this chapter: the relationship between centralisation and democracy,  central planning and quality of services, international relations from a socialist country’s point of view, women’s lives under socialism, and the question of caste-based reservations. We also discussed at length the new Constitution of Cuba, and the extensively democratic and consultative process of its drafting. The goal to create a communist society was included in the new Cuban constitution not at the insistence of the party, which had left the phrase  out, but through public demand. We spoke then of bureaucratisation in the Soviet Union, and political consciousness in Cuba.


We will keep Chapter 7: The Marxist View of Nature, as reading for homework, given that it is a chapter on Marxist philosophy that requires close, careful reading. Next week, we will discuss that chapter and read Chapter 8: A Guide to Action.


We hope to see you there, and do send us your questions and thoughts!


Revolutionary Greetings,

Central Unit Committee

Democratic Youth Federation of India – Delhi

Study Circle 6 of 2019 – Bhagat Singh Again

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DYFI-CUC organised the sixth study circle of this year on 24th February. We started reading the essay: “Shaheed Bhagat Singh an immortal revolutionary”, by Ashok Dhawale (https://www.cpim.org/marxist/200602-Bhagat-singh.pdf). Dhawale is the President of the All India Kisan Sabha. The text traces the ideological and organisational development of the revolutionary movement in the colonial era, focusing on the Ghadar party in Punjab and United Provinces, along with the HSRA. From the text it can be seen that Bhagat Singh and his comrades were shifting towards Marxism, while letting go of romantic nationalist notions.

In the discussion, we analysed the organisational methods of Indian revolutionaries, acknowledging both their successes and failures. We talked about the importance of an ideologically driven organisation for the making of a revolution. We talked about caste and its relationship with class politics. Here, we had some interesting discussions about Periyar.

We discussed the differences between the upsurges during the 19th and 20th centuries, and how the class content of the dominant anti-imperialist struggles had undergone changes.

We also discussed the demand for regional autonomy and analysed it from a class perspective.

Next week, we shall complete this text. We hope to see you there!

Revolutionary greetings,
Central Unit Committee
Democratic Youth Federation of India, Delhi