Last month, June 2025, saw the twelve-day U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. On July 4, U.S. Independence Day, Donald Trump signed his “Big Beautiful Bill.” The bill means class war at home, and the twelve-day war against Iran points to more imperialist war abroad. This month, we examine the class war at home and the capitalist war economy.
Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is a massive attack on the working class, science, art, education, and human culture in general. We could write volumes about this wretched thing, but we will zero in on the attack on the working class. The spearhead is the attack on the Medicaid program. To grasp its importance, it helps to understand Marx’s theory of wage labor and surplus value.
The capitalist mode of production involves two primary classes. One, the capitalist class, owns the means of production. The other, the working class, owns only its ability to work, called labor power. The other classes are remnants of modes of production that preceded the rise of capitalism, including private landowners and owners of their own means of production. In pure capitalism, these classes do not exist, although pure capitalism will never be fully realized.
Under pure capitalism, individual workers do not own their means of production. To work, they must sell their ability to work to a capitalist who owns the means of production. Like all sellers of commodities, workers sell their commodity for a sum of money called a price. The price of labor power is called a wage.
Like all commodities, labor power has a value determined by the quantity of labor necessary to produce it. Note: our ability to work is not the same as labor itself. Work is the act of working, a verb, while labor power is the ability to work, a noun. An isolated human could not survive for long; humans can only survive within a society. Our ability to work, our labor power, is itself a product of the labor of other humans.
The quantity of labor power is measured in a unit of time, such as seconds, minutes, or hours. We use the same unit of measure we use to measure labor — some unit of time. Let’s assume the work day is eight hours. This means two things: One, we have eight hours of labor power. Two, we have eight hours of labor.
Classical economists confused labor power, the ability to work, with the act of working. Before 1857, so did Karl Marx. You have to think about it for a while to grasp the distinction, but once you do, a lot of things that were previously hidden are revealed.
The amount of labor necessary to produce our ability to work for eight hours is not the same thing as performing eight hours of labor. Under the capitalist mode of production, the labor necessary to produce the ability to work for eight hours is considerably less than eight hours. Otherwise, capitalists would have no incentive to purchase the labor power of the workers.
The difference between the total labor that workers perform and the labor that the workers perform that replaces the value of their wages is called surplus value. The ratio between the labor performed during the unpaid part of the working day and the paid part is called the rate of surplus value. As we have often stressed, the surplus value realized in money (measured in the use value of the money commodity) is profit. Profit is the sole aim of capitalist production.
Expand or die
Without profit, the capitalist cannot survive. And without an adequate amount of profit, the capitalist cannot expand their capital sufficiently to remain a capitalist.
As explained before, since the market for commodities over time cannot keep up with the ability of the capitalists to increase commodity production, it is a matter of life and death for them to extract as much surplus value as possible from the working class to keep up with the competition, or they will lose everything. They’ll cease being a capitalist and, assuming pure capitalism, will fall into the working class, a fate to be avoided at all costs!
Competition takes place between individual capitalists and their corporations, as well as between groups of capitalists organized into nation-states. The ancestor of capitalist nation-states was the city-state, sometimes embedded in multinational empires. The political organization, the city-state, and old-time multinational empires handed down to capitalism by pre-capitalist society are inadequate for capitalism. Over centuries of political evolution, punctuated by revolutions, the capitalist nation-state emerged. In its pure form, an ideal only approximated, a capitalist nation-state covers a geographical entity larger than a city-state, comparable to a pre-capitalist empire.
Within the borders of the nation-state, there is a common currency, a common standard of weights and measures, freedom of trade, and a common language. (Pre-capitalist empires were multi-lingual.) There is a single common religion that most or all citizens practice (unlike pre-capitalist empires, where many religions and cults coexisted). An ideal nation-state would have a single religion and a ruling political ideology. For example, everybody would be Protestant Christian and believe in “(bourgeois) democracy.”
Some city-states of old, such as Rome, created empires that extended beyond the limits of a mere city-state. The most powerful bourgeois nation-states have created large empires that extend beyond the territorial limits of a nation-state. At the level of empire, like pre-capitalist empires, there are diverse nationalities, religions, cultures, and so on, within. Capitalist empires, like their pre-capitalist counterparts, can be formal legal empires, such as the British Empire, or informal ones, like the U.S. Empire. In these cases, a capitalist nation-state (for example, the United States) forms the core, much like the city-state of Rome formed the core of the Roman Empire.
Capitalist economic competition occurs between individuals and nation-states. Political, military, and economic competition occurs between capitalist nation-states. Individual capitalists operating within a bourgeois nation-state that is winning the competition with other nation-states are more likely to be successful (though it doesn’t guarantee it) than those in decline.
One way an individual wins the battle of competition is to exploit workers more fully (maintain a higher ratio between unpaid and paid labor) than the competition. The same is true of capitalist nation-states. For an individual nation to gain ground in international competition, its capitalists must produce commodities of a given use value and quality at a lower cost price than their rivals. To achieve this, the government must follow policies that reduce the value of labor power and hold down workers’ real wages.
In the past, the U.S. was able to make up for the historic relatively high cost of labor (power) due to the scarcity of workers dating back to colonial times, through a greater application of machinery than other nations. Natural conditions also allowed agriculture to achieve a high level of productivity relative to others, further lowering the value of labor power. Remember, the value of labor power is the value of the commodities the workers must purchase to reproduce their labor power, both in renewing their own and raising the next generation of workers. The value of agricultural commodities plays an important role in this.
Assume the U.S. working day is ten hours. Due to superior productivity, an hour of labor in the United States may be equivalent to two hours in the global market. This means that a U.S. worker working ten hours of labor, in market terms, works the equivalent of twenty hours, in world market terms. Assuming a 100% rate of surplus value in the U.S. in terms of national values, U.S. workers would work five hours a day for themselves and five hours for the capitalists. In world market terms, U.S. workers would work ten hours for themselves and ten hours for the capitalists.
This would not reflect any superior skill on the part of the U.S. workers and farmers, just the superior conditions of production due to the technical and natural conditions of production. In world market terms, this enables the average U.S. worker to produce twice as much surplus value as the average worker worldwide. If the U.S. worker was paid anything less than twice the average worldwide hourly wage, the rate of surplus value is higher than average, even if the U.S. worker had higher real wages than in another capitalist country.
In addition, as the value of gold (world money) is much the same worldwide, a capitalist could transform a given amount of money capital into a greater quantity of real capital, constant or variable. Starting with a quantity of money capital measured in a given weight of gold, U.S. capitalists could realize a higher rate of profit on an initial investment of money. U.S. capitalists could produce commodities of a given use value and quality at a lower cost price than those in other countries. This made it possible for U.S. capitalists to undersell those in other countries, despite higher real wages, and capture an ever larger share of the global market.
These factors that once favored U.S. capitalism have progressively faded away. The U.S. monopoly on machine-intensive production has steadily eroded since 1945, and food prices are no longer particularly low. Increasingly, an hour of average labor performed in the U.S. represents an hour on the world market. This puts much greater pressure on U.S. capitalists to lower the wages of their workers, and real wages have not risen since the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today, this isn’t enough, and U.S. capitalists are under pressure to lower real wages to halt the decline in market share that the U.S. has experienced since 1945.
Non-Marxist progressives focus on tax cuts for the rich
This is where the Big Beautiful Bill comes in. Non-Marxist progressives explain that this bill is designed to finance tax cuts for the rich. The US government bond market has been shaky in recent months, in part due to cyclical forces but also the prospect of additional tax cuts. Since the dollar has been shaky against gold, the Federal Reserve cannot prop up the bond market by printing more paper dollars.
It is estimated that federal tax revenue will decrease by approximately $5 trillion over the next decade. Republicans claim that to avoid a further increase in federal borrowing, which could lead to higher long-term interest rates and lower economic growth, it is necessary to reduce government spending. Since Democrats and Republicans agree that the “defense” budget cannot be cut, social programs, federally supported medical and scientific research, and education must be reduced to finance the tax cuts.
Progressives point out that the problem could be avoided by canceling the tax cuts. They say the Republican cuts are just a move by the rich to reduce an already light tax burden on themselves, so neither the federal deficit nor interest rates will rise.
Republicans claim tax cuts are needed to stimulate increased investment in industry. If taxes are reduced on “savers” (the rich) even more, the after-tax profit rate will rise. Higher profits lead to more investments and more job creation, so that the tax cuts will finance themselves. Even though the rate on a given quantity of taxes on a given quantity of income will drop, according to GOP logic, there will be more profits to tax, and everybody —worker and boss —will benefit. There will be more jobs for the workers and higher returns on their capital for the rich. This isn’t quite the language used, but it captures the essence of the Republicans’ argument, one that has been made for decades, so there is nothing new here.
Progressives say these time-worn arguments, sometimes called “supply-side economics,” are an excuse made by Republicans to hide from the voters that, in reality, they represent the rich. This is true as far as it goes, but it misses the main point.
What they are really after: reduce wages below value of labor power
Progressives know nothing about Marx’s surplus value. The concept forms the foundation of what Marx and Engels called scientific socialism. If we don’t explain surplus value when we analyze the Big Beautiful Bill and other reactionary policies put forward by Republicans and not effectively fought by the Democrats, we are using the blunted weapons of progressives, not the sharp weapons of Marxism.
Capitalists do everything they can to avoid paying taxes. With the help of the bribed and corrupt two-party political system, they are successful, but this is not their primary goal. By applying the theory of surplus value, we get to see what they are really after: not just the redistribution of surplus value in favor of themselves through tax cuts, but an increase in the rate and mass of surplus value.
This is done by increasing competition among workers for jobs while reducing competition among themselves for labor (power). They do all they can to make workers more desperate for jobs that may or may not be on offer. The value of labor power includes food commodities, and the Big Beautiful Bill cuts the federal food stamp program called SNAP, and hunger becomes one of their weapons. Medical care is included, but the bill restricts access to it.
In theory, access to food and medical care should be covered by wages. But as Marx explained, capitalists often pay wages below the value of labor power. If wages are not high enough to cover the cost of medical care (either out of pocket or through affordable medical insurance), they are below the value of labor power. Similarly, if you have a job but need food stamps to cover food expenses, you’re being paid below the value of your labor power. You are not only exploited, but you are being super-exploited, and the boss makes a super-profit.
For the last 80 years, U.S. bosses have been steadily losing ground to European and Japanese capitalists, and now to China and other countries in the Global South. The peak of U.S. capitalism is way behind us. Paying wages below the value of labor power is the only way they can hang on to their market shares and businesses. To continue, they must pressure their politicians to move further to the right. Republicans become ever more reactionary, and Democrats refuse to fight effectively to reverse the policies when they get into office.
As explained above, the idea behind policies like the Big Beautiful Bill is to increase competition among workers for jobs, thereby increasing the number of desperate people willing to work for a wage well below the value of their labor power. This is the real reason for the addition of “work requirements” as a condition of eligibility for Medicaid for people below age 65. This forces more people into the labor market, competition for jobs, lower wages — and higher surplus value and profit rates.
The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Big Beautiful Bill will cost 15.7 million people their Medicaid medical insurance. In answering a question about this on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Trump’s National Economic Council Director economist Kevin Hassett replied, “The bottom line is, the best way to get insurance is to get a job. … And we’ve got a ‘big, beautiful bill’ that’s going to create a lot of job creation and a lot of insurance, and the CBO is just not accounting for that.” Here, Mr. Hassett let the cat out of the bag, as the expression goes.
“Under this bill if you are an adult under 65, to keep Medicaid you must have a job (with no guarantee they’ll be available), volunteer (work for nothing), or attend school — eighty hours per month,” Hassett said.
There are many ways those with Medicaid can be kicked off their insurance. These include so-called “means testing” that involves intrusive paperwork every six months to prove eligibility. Failure to complete the long forms correctly results in disenrollment. Many will just give up believing they are not eligible when they actually are. This forces people to decline enrollment out of frustration, and turn to the glutted labor market in a desperate and fruitless search for work.
Hassett “knows” as a trained neoclassical economist that in a capitalist economy, everybody who truly wants a job will find one. As Marxists and anyone who has ever engaged in job searches, as well as the bosses themselves (and very likely even neoclassical economist Hassett), know, this is not true.
The aim is that with so many desperate people entering the labor market, competition will increase, driving down the price of labor power and wages. This increases the part of the working day where workers work for free for the bosses (and their hangers-on like Hassett) at the expense of the part of the working day where they work for themselves.
During Trump’s first term, Republicans made a similar attack on health insurance in the name of “repealing and replacing Obamacare.” Working-class Trump voters did not realize the aim was not to improve Obamacare but to increase their exploitation at the hands of their bosses. Not a single Democratic politician explained that the real aims of “repeal and replace” are to increase their unpaid hours of work. Despite this, many Trump voters caught on that the real goal was to make things even worse.
The movement for healthcare as a human right, sometimes referred to as Medicare for All, began to gain momentum. This frightened Republicans, who feared they might lose their seats in the coming elections. At the last moment, enough Republicans joined Democrats to defeat “Repeal and Replace Obamacare.” In the 2018 mid-term elections, Republicans lost many seats, and in 2020, Trump failed to win a second term.
Since then, U.S. capitalists have continued to lose ground in world markets to Chinese and other competitors. Their desire to increase the rate of surplus value by increasing competition among workers has become more desperate. One sign is the increase of U.S. tariffs during the first Trump administration, then the Biden administration, and now the second Trump administration.
Although the Republican majority in the House of Representatives was paper-thin, and the defection of only a few Republicans would have defeated the “Big Beautiful Bill,” they did not back down. Republicans and Democrats are being forced by the capitalists to put their electoral prospects second to their real job representing the class and commercial interests of the ruling capitalist class, even if it costs them their seats.
The history of healthcare in the United States
During the 1930s New Deal, when U.S. capitalists were in a stronger position relative to those of other countries than today, Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt promised to create some type of government medical insurance scheme. Its implementation was postponed after the reactionary American Medical Association complained about “socialized medicine.”
Democrats promised it would come later, but later never came. The Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower instead established an employer-centered health insurance system, where the boss provided health insurance. This system was ideal for bosses because it meant that if you lost your job, you would also lose your health insurance, strengthening their hand in the struggle over the rate of surplus value.
In contrast to the Republicans, Democrats promised to establish a government-backed system of medical insurance for all eventually. As the Cold War (the global class war) set in from 1945 onward, the struggle against the Soviet-led socialist camp and associated international communist movement on one side, and U.S. imperialism on the other, replaced the struggle among the old imperialist empires that dominated the pre-1945 world. U.S. foreign policy aimed to “defeat communism.” In Western Europe, it was recognized that unless significant concessions were made, the influence of communism would expand; therefore, many governments developed schemes to make medical insurance accessible to all.
European capitalists did not like it, but insurance schemes were considered the lesser evil to socialist revolution. In a socialist revolution, capitalists would face the loss of all their capital and be forced to take jobs! Nothing was worse than that!
Within the Soviet bloc, a system of universal medical insurance, administered by labor unions (which most people were members of under communist-led governments), was established. Gone were the union-busting bosses!
After 1945, as the Cold War dragged on and capitalism boomed, it became clear that any attempt to take away government medical insurance would lead to a political crisis. With medical care established as a human right (as opposed to medical care as a commodity), there’s little support (beyond the exploiters of human labor) to go back to the old system.
In today’s Europe, even extreme right-wing parties do not dare propose such a return. On this question, even the most right-wing European parties are far to the left of Democrats (not to speak of Republicans). On the few occasions when some capitalist politicians have dared propose this, they’ve received only one or two percent of the vote.
In the U.S., things have evolved in the opposite direction. After 1945, the U.S. Communist Party was greatly weakened. While Western European communist parties led the resistance to fascism, U.S. communists supported the “no strike pledge” in the name of winning the “war against fascism.” As soon as the war was over, the U.S. Communist Party fell victim to a vicious witch hunt, later dubbed the “McCarthy era,” and its influence in trade unions and elsewhere was rooted out or greatly reduced.
With little pressure from the left, unlike in Western Europe, where anticommunism was associated with fascism, the U.S. capitalists saw no reason to grant healthcare as a human right, even though they could have easily afforded to do so.
During Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration, best known for the war against Vietnam, Democrats established the Medicare and Medicaid government insurance system. Medicare was and is available to people over 65, who are generally considered past working age.
The other system, called Medicaid, is available to people of working age but only to those who are very poor.
Medicare and Medicaid were enacted during a Democratic administration and by a Democratic-controlled Congress, dominated by the Jim Crow segregationist Southern Democrats, including Lyndon B. Johnson from Texas.
So, the Democrats set up Medicare, healthcare for older people, to be administered directly by the federal government, while Medicaid, healthcare for the poor, is administered by the states.
Today, that means that access to Medicaid is limited, particularly in the now-Republican-dominated states, especially those in the former Jim Crow states of the U.S. South. There are invasive “means tests” even for people over 65 seeking Medicaid. Now, under the Big Beautiful Bill, Republicans have succeeded in imposing “work requirements.”
During the economic crisis of 1979-82, extreme right-wing Republican Ronald Reagan was elected, skewing the debate about medical care far to the right. Rather than strengthening their previous calls for universal health insurance, Democrats abandoned the proposal entirely. The promise made by Democrats during the New Deal but never kept was now formally rescinded.
In recent years, more left-leaning Democrats, such as Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have proposed reviving this promise in the form of “Medicare for All.” This would expand the Medicare system to all, regardless of age. Sanders’s suggestion, though supported by most Democratic voters and many Republican voters, has been rejected by top Democratic leaders and, of course, Republican leaders.
During the 2016 election, Bernie Sanders, a “democratic socialist” (social democrat in contemporary European terms), who was originally considered a fringe candidate, won a surprising number of votes. The old-time scare talk spread by the capitalist class about “creeping socialism” spearheaded by “socialized medicine” was losing effectiveness.
It became clear that the majority in the U.S. were fed up with the “employer-centered” health insurance scheme established by the Republicans in the 1950s and slightly modified under “Obamacare.” Most people want a European-style government-backed healthcare system for all. Sanders demanded that the Democrats implement their abandoned New Deal promise. The Democratic machine candidate (Hillary Clinton), speaking for the capitalists, opposed this, claiming she’d “improve” Obamacare. Anything else would be “too expensive.”
Then, as the 2020 election approached, the movement to establish universal healthcare grew in the wake of the Trump-Republican attempt to “repeal and replace Obamacare.” Capitalists feared Sanders might win the Democratic nomination and the election. If a President Sanders proposed a plan to expand Medicare into a true universal healthcare system, congressional Democrats would have a tough time explaining why they were blocking with Republicans to defeat it.
Prodded by former President Obama, all the major Democratic presidential candidates, except Senator Sanders, announced they were dropping their own presidential campaigns to rally around Vice President Joseph Biden. Biden opposed “Medicare for All” because “we cannot afford it,” though all other developed (and some not-so-developed) capitalist countries easily afford it.
Biden even promised to veto a Sanders-style “Medicare for All” bill in the unlikely event it passed Congress, where most members are Democrats or Republicans. Plenty of money for genocide in Gaza, but no money for medical care as a human right. This is Genocide Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for you!
Biden claimed to support a so-called “public option” that would allow people under 65 to purchase federally supported health insurance, which was originally part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — also known as Obamacare — but was later dropped. Once in office, Genocide Joe did not fight for the public option. The increasingly hated Republican employer-centered health insurance remains intact, now reinforced by the addition of work requirements for Medicaid.
After Biden won the 2020 election, it seemed Obamacare was safe. And Republicans, realizing that “repeal and replace” was a losing issue for them, implied they would drop it, undermining the movement for single payer. It was one factor that enabled Trump and the Republicans to win the 2024 elections.
To fight this renewed attack on healthcare, we must return to the streets to revive the movement for medical care as a human right and not a commodity. What about the ballot box? As long as we keep voting for Democrats to defeat Republicans, even with street demonstrations, it will be difficult if not impossible to win this fight, especially during this declining phase of U.S. capitalism.
The capitalists have two major parties that represent their interests. It’s time we, the working class, had a party that represents our interests. Only the capitalist minority opposes health care as a right. The working class has to build its own party to fight and defeat the capitalist minority.
War on Iran
June 2025 saw what is being called the twelve-day war of the U.S.-Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Without provocation, the Zionist entity launched a bombing and missile attack on Iran. A major component was the deliberate targeting of Iran’s military leaders and scientists. The acts targeted Tehran’s apartment buildings, killing the targeted individuals as well as their families and neighbors (called “collateral damage” by the attackers). The excuse for the attack was the accusation that Iran was about to acquire nuclear weapons. The Zionist entity has been making the same claim for the last 30 years. (1)
Earlier, the U.S. vetoed military attacks by the Zionist regime on Iran. In June 2025, the Trump regime reversed this decision, giving it the go-ahead to launch its surprise attack. In addition, U.S. forces were directly involved in attempting to neutralize Iran’s counterattack. U.S. intervention did not end there.
The Zionist entity scored some early victories by killing several Iranian leaders and catching its air defenses off guard. The Trump administration went through the motions of scheduling negotiations over Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program just before the attacks. This was a ruse by the Trump regime. The man who was to represent Iran was among those targeted for death by Israeli agents.
The diplomat who was to represent Iran in these negotiations was dead on the day negotiations were to begin. (2)
Near the end of the twelve-day war, U.S. B-2 bombers attacked Iranian nuclear sites. Pictures were released showing mountainous terrain with three tiny holes where the massive bunker-buster bombs were dropped. It seems Iran had advanced warning that uranium-enriching sites would be targeted and had removed machinery and enriched uranium from the area in advance. Years from now, we may learn the details.
Trump and his mob used diplomacy and military strikes, two sides of the same imperialist policy, as they approach the purchases and sales of commodities. The seller claims their commodity is the greatest thing ever made and offers to sell it at “a great price.” The buyer claims the commodity is the greatest piece of junk ever seen, the price is greatly exaggerated, and offers to buy it for a few pennies. Both know the real value.
They shout and scream, but eventually come to a deal. If the buyer and seller have equal abilities, the price agreed upon will equal or come close to the actual value of the commodity.
Trump, as the businessman president, loves the bombastic language of the marketplace. He adopts threatening language, but in the end, he “makes a deal.”
During his first term, this was his approach to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). He threatened war, boasting he had a bigger button than North Korea to launch nuclear-armed missiles. At the time, North Korea was developing the capacity to hit the United States homeland with a nuclear-armed missile.
It seemed the world was on the edge of a second Korean war, more dangerous and bloody than the first in 1950-1953. Then, suddenly, Trump turned around and scheduled a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, claiming that he was in love with the North Korean leader. Several meetings took place, although little of substance came of them, and the situation has remained unchanged up until the time of this writing, July 2025.
The money pump
Two important events preceded the twelve-day war. One is the Israeli genocide carried out with the encouragement and support of the Biden and the Trump administrations. The other was the November 2024 seizure of power of pro-U.S. rebels in Syria with disastrous consequences for the people of Syria, as well as Gaza, Palestine, and Lebanon.
Why did Syria’s resistance crumble in 2024? In an earlier post, I explained that the U.S., in the name of “protecting the Kurds,” occupied northeastern Syria, an area containing the country’s oil and grain production. This destroyed Syria’s ability to export oil and grain, forcing it to buy these commodities on the world market. It threw the balance of trade and payments into deficit, draining money out of Syria. The value of the currency collapsed, leading to runaway inflation.
I call this the money pump because Syria’s money was “pumped out” of the country, causing its economy to collapse due to the lack of viable circulating media. More commonly, this process is called “financial strangulation,” with Syria following the fate of Venezuela when the U.S. did all it could to block Venezuela from selling its oil. (3)
This not only led to a drastic decline in the standard of living but also made it impossible for the government to pay the army. In contrast, pro-imperialist Syrian rebels were well paid. The army finally refused to continue the fight, and the pro-imperialist rebels took over.
The empire used similar money-pump financial strangulation policies against Iran. Although economically damaged, the impact has not been as severe as in Syria.
No part of Iran has been occupied by imperialist armies, or their paid stooges, and Iran can sell the bulk of its oil to the People’s Republic of China. (Syria couldn’t sell its more limited quantity of oil to any potential buyer as its oil-producing areas were U.S.-occupied.)
On a purely commercial basis, this has been a win-win situation for both Iran and China. China benefits from receiving the oil it needs for its expanding economy. Iran gains, to use the language of Marx’s “Capital,” because it is able to transform its oil, a commodity, into money. This eases the effects of the U.S.-imperialist money-pump strategy, saving the Iranian monetary system and economy from collapse. From a geopolitical viewpoint, as long as Iran can avoid the fate of Syria, it will be harder for the U.S. to wage war against China.
War and capitalist production
War affects both the real part of the capitalist system and the financial part.
Let’s look at the real part. War, of course, kills many potential producers of surplus value (workers), and consumes the means of production (factories, machines, as well as raw and auxiliary materials). It was only during World War II that the large-scale destruction of factories through bombing became a significant factor. Even then, Germany and Japan restored production within a few years.
Despite the deaths of tens of millions of workers as a result of World War I, the problem that faced the world economy was not a shortage of labor but the greatest crisis of mass unemployment in capitalism’s history. This is not to deny the great loss to humanity and its potential wealth represented by the deaths of so many workers as a result of the 20th century’s world wars.
The outcome of a 21st-century world war will be quite different. Productive forces have developed far beyond the level reached by the first half of the last century, and so have the means of destruction.
Today, we have fission bombs (atomic bombs), fusion bombs (hydrogen bombs), and many incredibly destructive non-nuclear weapons as well. I don’t want to speculate on what the result of a world war would be under today’s conditions and what would follow. What we can say is that while the two world wars of the last century led to the deaths of tens of millions of people, in this one, billions will be killed.
The difference between production and reproduction
Regardless of its mode of production, every country produces a quantity of products in a given year. To produce this quantity, a certain amount of means of production and raw and auxiliary materials are used up. The items that are used up must be replaced to continue on the same level. If they are not replaced, production will be undermined, and if continued, will eventually collapse.
If an economy produces only some of the products it needs to reproduce itself in a given year, even if its production rises, reproduction declines. A situation of rising production and declining reproduction can coexist for a limited time. If the decline of reproduction continues, it’s only a matter of time before production declines as well.
If the products used in the production of new products simply replace those used up, we experience what Marx called simple reproduction. If products used in production are not fully replaced, reproduction declines, regardless of whether production rises. If we are in a situation where products in production not only replace those that are used up, but also produce a surplus beyond that, we have expanded reproduction. In the long run, production will develop in the same direction as reproduction.
So far, these general laws apply to every type of economy, not just capitalism. Now I will discuss a capitalist economy that, in addition to obeying general laws, must also follow specific laws that apply to it.
A capitalist economy cannot limit itself to simple reproduction; it must expand or die. It must, over time, produce more wealth in the form of capital than it consumes. Under capitalist production, products must be commodities, possessing both a use value and an exchange value. Value takes the form of exchange value, what Marx called the value form, which comes down to the money form. This gives rise to specific economic laws that apply only to capitalism.
Regarding capitalist reproduction, this means that commodities used up must be replaced in terms of use value, measured by the unit of measurement appropriate to that particular use value, and exchange value, measured in the use value of the money commodity. Value is measured in units appropriate to the use value of the money commodity. This value form should not be confused with what Marx called the immanent measure of value: abstract human labor measured in some unit of time.
In any real-world capitalist economy, capital is simultaneously consumed and accumulated. If the accumulation of capital exceeds its consumption — the normal situation in a capitalist economy — we have a process of expanded capitalist reproduction. If we have a situation where the accumulation of capital equals its consumption, we have simple capitalist reproduction. And when we have a situation where the consumption of capital exceeds its production, we have contracted capitalist reproduction.
Contracted capitalist reproduction has been observed in two situations. One is during crises of overproduction. The second occurs during all-out war economies. Neither situation can last for long.
For capitalist reproduction to proceed smoothly, different commodity use values must be produced in certain proportions (this applies to all economies). Additionally, in a capitalist economy, the values of commodities must be produced in certain proportions. If commodities, either as use values or values, are not produced in the correct proportions, a crisis in capitalist (expanded) reproduction will occur.
Classes and capitalist reproduction
No real-world concrete human economy is purely capitalist. Taken as a whole, capitalist relations are dominant and become more so over time. Let’s abstract out everything that is not capitalist and imagine a pure capitalist economy. It consists of two social classes: a capitalist class that buys labor power with the intention of producing surplus value, and a working class that has only its labor power to sell. To reproduce itself, a capitalist economy must also reproduce the two essential classes it needs to exist.
A social class must reproduce the human beings that make up its ranks. The individuals making up the class must survive long enough to raise a new generation to replace them when they die. To reproduce, they must consume products produced by other humans and items of individual consumption must be made in sufficient quantities to facilitate reproduction.
Capitalist consumption
To reproduce, the members of the capitalist class must produce use values in sufficient quantities to allow it to reproduce itself in the biological sense, or it will perish. (4)
As a rule, individual capitalists consume more products (that they must purchase on the market as commodities) than necessary to ensure biological reproduction. We divide capitalist consumption into two parts: necessities for biological survival and luxuries that exceed biological needs.
For example, Mr. Trump, the 45th and 47th president of the United States, needs some sort of shelter to survive: a necessity. As far as I can tell from what I find online, Mr. Trump has or has had homes in Westchester, New York; Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York City; New Jersey; Virginia; and Florida. He has had residences at various times in Connecticut, California, St. Martin (in the Caribbean), and other places: luxuries.
This is not unusual among the “super-rich,” those with the most capital and landed property. Trump does not need more than one residence. Currently, in the United States, there are employed workers who rely solely on their cars for shelter. Their car doubles as a residence and means of transportation (though designed only as a means of transportation). Some workers don’t even have that.
While I have no idea how many cars Trump owns, I know he has at least one private jet with the name “Trump” painted on it, and the Qatar government has gifted him another. Most of us get through life and raise children to replace us when we die without owning a single jet plane. Although Trump is very rich, he’s by no means the richest of capitalists. If I remember correctly, former Vice President Al Gore had, or has, five estates. Again, just one of Mr. Gore’s mansions could probably house at least a few working-class families.
The point is that almost every capitalist consumes more items of personal consumption than they need to remain alive throughout a full biological lifetime and raise children to replace them when the time comes.
Hypothetically, we can imagine a society where capitalists do not engage in this excessive consumption. To the extent they consume beyond the level sufficient to reproduce their class, they are not acting as capitalists. By engaging in excessive consumption, they actually hinder capitalist expanded reproduction. When capitalists spend their income beyond what is necessary for their biological survival, they squander and thereby reduce the total quantity of social capital rather than expand it, in actuality, “betraying” their mission as capitalists.
Working class consumption
In our “pure capitalist society,” workers are paid the value of their labor power, no more, no less. They’re paid a sum of money, a wage, that enables them to purchase commodities, wage goods, that allow them to live and reproduce a new generation of workers. Commodities that function as wage goods are necessary if capitalist (expanded) reproduction is to exist.
If the workers are not reproduced, capitalist expanded reproduction soon comes to a halt. Capitalists do everything they can to keep wages as low as possible, but cannot reduce them below the level required by (expanded) reproduction for long. The personal consumption of workers is productive and vital for the capitalist (expanded reproduction).
In “Capital, Volume II,” Marx divides capitalist industry into two sectors: industries that produce the means of production, which he refers to as Department I, and industries that produce the means of consumption, which he refers to as Department II.
Marx subdivides Department II into two sub-departments, one that produces necessities consumed by both workers and capitalists, and one that produces luxuries consumed by the capitalists alone.
Unlike commodities produced for the working class as necessities, for the capitalists, the commodities that are not necessary for capitalist reproduction, that serve only the fancies of the capitalist class, are available for that class alone. From the viewpoint of capitalist reproduction, though the production of luxury commodities is a dead loss, they are a big part of the “rewards” that go to capitalists and their hangers-on. Some Marxists have put luxury commodity production into a special Department III.
The means of destruction as use values and commodities
What about commodities that function not as means of consumption or production but as means of destruction: guns, battleships, tanks, bombers, missiles, and bombs, etc?
The capitalist state produces some of these products for its own use, not as commodities. The state must purchase the commodities needed to produce the military items it requires. Except for nuclear weapons, in the United States, the means of destruction are produced by private for-profit corporations and sold to the state, where the state acts as a monopoly buyer.
There is an active international trade in which arms producers make commodities for multiple states. This is a branch of capitalist production, or rather, a group of related industries.
How does the production of weapons relate to capitalist reproduction?
Commodities serving as constant capital pass on their value directly to the products they help produce. Labor power that becomes variable capital when it is purchased by a capitalist reproduces its own value, as well as producing surplus value.
Commodities that are necessities when capitalists consume them don’t pass on any value. They function as commodities under capitalist production, serving as commodity capital that has absorbed surplus value until purchased by their final consumer, in this case, a capitalist. Their value disappears as they are consumed.
Such commodities are necessary for capitalist production because they are required to produce and reproduce the capitalists themselves. Without capitalists, you cannot have capitalist reproduction, and it’s capitalist reproduction we are dealing with here.
Capitalists don’t have to consume luxury commodities to reproduce themselves. Luxuries fall outside the reproduction process. To the extent that capitalists purchase unnecessary luxury items, expanded capitalist production is suppressed.
Capitalist reproduction would proceed with greater vigor if capitalists instead invested their profits back into production. Capitalists producing luxury commodities profit when they sell their commodities to other capitalists and transform some of these profits into new productive capital. However, their own expanded reproduction is at the expense of expanded capitalist reproduction as a whole.
What about military commodities? Assuming that military items are capitalistically produced, they represent commodity capital, commodities that have absorbed surplus value. When they reach their final consumer, the military of a capitalist state, they fall out of the reproduction process, just like luxury commodities do.
They exist as use values; weapons are useful for the military, before they are “consumed” in warfare or allowed to deteriorate on the shelf before eventually being junked because they are judged obsolete or no longer usable.
To the extent that warfare allows one capitalist nation-state to seize markets or raw materials from another state, expanded reproduction is stimulated in that particular state. But in the defeated state, capitalist reproduction is weakened. At the global level, capitalist expanded reproduction is weakened by military production.
When a nation increases its war expenditures, production of military commodities increases. Unless this increased production is financed by reducing luxury commodity production, the accumulation of capital on a social scale is reduced.
In a war situation, some factories that would otherwise produce necessities for workers and capitalists will cause the reproduction of the two social classes needed for capitalist reproduction to be impaired. To the extent that factories that reproduce items that serve as constant capital will shift to military production, the accumulation of constant capital and therefore expanded capitalist reproduction is directly suppressed.
The economic effect is the same as if the capitalist class suddenly reduced its savings, as bourgeois economists put it, and increased their luxury consumption. Imagine the capitalist class so reduced its savings that it began to eat its own capital. That is, instead of accumulating capital, their capital began to shrink. Capitalist reproduction would go negative. With each new production cycle, total social capital would shrink. Such a situation couldn’t last long in a capitalist economy.
This is what happens in war, except that instead of individual capitalists engaging in a binge of luxury consumption, the state engages in destructive consumption of the means of destruction. Individual capitalists producing military items profit and can accelerate their own individual accumulation of productive capital, but only by repressing the reproduction of the total social capital.
Individual capitalists begin to encounter difficulties transforming their profits into new means of production to replace those being used up or physically destroyed in warfare. Even if machines continue to function unimpaired for the time being, they lose value as they are physically consumed through wear and tear, and come ever closer to the point at which they will cease to function.
As long as the wear and tear doesn’t cause the machinery to fail, production can be maintained and even increased. But the value of the fixed capital is shrinking. Reproduction declines while production increases. At some point, the machinery fails and production then declines. Reproduction and production can move in opposite directions for a time, but in the long run, increased or even unchanged production cannot be combined with declining reproduction.
Last but not least, there is the destruction of potential variable capital. The more soldiers who die on the battlefields, the less surplus value that can be produced in the future. The soldiers are both potential producers of surplus value and potential producers of new human beings who will become future producers of surplus value.
A historic example of this is World War II. The war and the Great Depression that preceded it greatly reduced the birthrate and the potential for surplus value production. Fortunately for the capitalists, the “baby boom” that followed these two back-to-back massive disruptions in capitalist expanded reproduction accelerated the ability of capitalist society to produce surplus value on an expanded scale once again.
As the war economy replaces expanded reproduction with contracted reproduction, industrial capitalists find they can’t find the commodities that allow them to replace the capital used up in production. They use the profits they can no longer transform into additional production and purchase government bonds instead.
Real capital is replaced by fictitious capital in the form of government bonds.
The capitalist hopes that the bond purchases will function as fictitious capital, giving the owners a claim on future government tax revenues that depend on future surplus value production. This works only to the extent that the government issuing the bonds that the capitalists buy is victorious in the war.
If a capitalist has the bad luck to live in a losing country, for example Germany in both world wars of the 20th century, the depreciation of the currency against the money commodity either eat the principle and interest income on the bonds (see Germany in World War I), or the bonds will be repudiated outright (see Germany in World War II).
In a war among capitalists (assume all states are capitalist), the victorious state dumps the costs of the war on the shoulders of the losing state.
The monetary consequences of a war economy
So far, we have only considered the effects of war on the accumulation of real capital. The capitalist system is also a process of accumulating money capital. Because capitalism is the highest stage of commodity production, it has to accumulate a portion of its growing mass of capital in the form of an increase in money capital. That is, more gold has to be produced, increasing the total quantity of gold in the world.
The function of the industrial cycle is to maintain over a long time the necessary proportion between the quantity of capital made up of non-money commodities, real wealth, and the smaller portion that consists of the money commodity, gold, which is necessary for expanded capitalist reproduction.
When not enough money capital is accumulated, money grows “tight,” interest rates soar, financial markets crash, credit dries up, and the economy experiences an overproduction crisis. The crisis causes commodity prices, measured in the use value of the money commodity, to fall below their values and production prices.
Production prices, like all prices, are measured in the use value of the money commodity. When market prices fall below production prices (and values) of commodities, money-material production rises, even as non-money commodity production (real wealth) falls.
It’s a common argument of Keynesian-influenced Marxist economists (the Monthly Review School) that war stimulates capitalist production and is good for the capitalist economy. They falsely claim that World War II was what finally brought the Great Depression to an end. They misunderstand how the onset of war stimulates capitalist production while repressing expanded reproduction. To understand why this is, you have to keep in mind certain facts about capitalism.
On average, when the economy is halfway between the highest point of the industrial cycle (boom) and the lowest point (depression), there is a sizable amount of idle productive capacity in the form of machines, excess stocks of raw materials, and idle potential labor power (unemployment). If the economy operated at full capacity of constant capital and variable capital (as assumed by neoclassical economists), there would be no war that could stimulate increased production even in the short run. In reality, even at the high point of the industrial cycle, the physical economy still operates well below capacity. To fully analyze the war economy, we cannot limit ourselves to describing the real economy. We must examine the accumulation of money capital.
War production has a negative impact on money material production, though for different reasons than its negative impact on real capital accumulation. To be sure, some of the factors suppressing real capital accumulation in wartime can also affect money capital accumulation.
During World War II, some gold mines were shut down by the government to release miners to become soldiers or produce the means of destruction. We note, however, that money material is not destroyed like real capital is.
Additional money material production is, however, impaired, but the main negative effects on money material production in a war economy are caused by price movements. Surging demand, driven by a rise in government deficit spending and central bank “money printing,” causes commodity market prices in terms of the use value of the money commodity to rise relative to the values and prices of commodity production as a whole.
This causes a slowdown in money production, similar to what happens during the upward phase of the industrial cycle. This occurs to a greater extent in a war economy than during a cyclical boom. As prices of non-money commodities measured in gold terms increase, the profitability of producing gold declines, absolutely and relatively, to the profitability of non-money commodity production.
In a war economy, despite the surge in demand, expanded capitalist reproduction goes into reverse. This checks the overproduction that arises from expanded capitalist reproduction only in the sense that it suppresses capitalist production because, without expanded reproduction, you can’t have capitalist production.
This is another way of saying that if you want to get rid of overproduction, you have to eliminate capitalist production. Because the war economy suppresses capitalist expanded reproduction, you cannot have a permanent all-out war economy.
Once the war economy ends, the ability of markets to expand is impaired until prices fall back to or below production prices. The impaired market expansion following the end of a war economy leads to sharper crises, slower recoveries, and higher unemployment in the years that follow.
The financial impact of a war economy also depends on the economic and financial conditions before the war, meaning that war economies become intertwined with the industrial cycle. A classic example is the world economy just before World War I and World War II. We have said this before, but we will review it here.
After years of rising prices that began in 1896, just before World War I, the rise in global gold production stopped. The price rise was partially a reaction to years of falling prices that began in 1873, but also reflected the real gold devaluation that occurred due to the invention of the cyanide process, which made it possible to extract more gold from ore, as well as the discovery of rich new gold mines in the Klondike.
The price movements reflected fluctuations in production prices, as well as an increase in market prices, as the late 19th-century depression gave way to booming conditions. The devaluation of gold at the end of the 19th century resulted in a rise in direct prices and production prices measured in terms of the use value of gold.
But on the eve of World War I, the Klondike gold mines were depleted, and this had the opposite effect, resulting in lowered direct and production prices in terms of the use value of the money commodity. As World War I approached, the rise in world gold production leveled off, and money became tight.
This was temporarily eased by the world recession of 1913-14. Once the war ended, a deflationary recession occurred in the victorious countries, while massive paper money inflation prevailed in the defeated countries, resulting in lower gold market prices across all capitalist countries.
The price declines of 1920-21 did not lower market commodity prices all the way to production prices. We know this because, despite the rise in trade within countries and world trade, world gold production remained below levels that prevailed on the eve of the war.
The recovery of the civilian commodity production proceeded at a faster rate than the recovery of money-material production. The result was overproduction of non-money commodities relative to the money commodity. This was the perfect recipe for a massive overproduction crisis.
It took a full industrial cycle, from 1920 to 1929, before expanded reproduction led to full-scale overproduction. After that came the super-crisis of 1929-33.
The World War I war economy “solved” the problem of mass unemployment temporarily, at the price of the biggest crisis of unemployment in the history of capitalism once the industrial cycle of 1920-1929 had run its course. (5)
For a few years, unemployment was eliminated at the price of millions of workers dying in the trenches. After 1929, just eleven or twelve years after the war, the capitalist world experienced its worst-ever unemployment crisis.
The Great Depression and resulting price collapse of non-money commodities stimulated gold production at a time when capitalist production was deeply depressed and expanded reproduction went negative in peacetime.
One reproduction sector was strongly stimulated — the production of money material. By the end of the decade, the capitalist world was glutted with gold due to the rise in production and stagnant commodity production, lowering the ratio of non-money commodity production relative to gold. As a result, interest rates tumbled to the lowest level in capitalism’s history as idle money capital piled up in the bank, especially in the United States.
On the eve of World War II, in the world’s leading capitalist country, the United States of America, not only was there a great quantity of idle means of production, but a huge quantity of idle dollar-denominated money capital in the banks. These dollars were not created through “open market” operations or the rediscounting of commercial paper by the Federal Reserve. The new dollars reflected the piling up of gold reserves in Fort Knox and other federal depositories. (6)
Some of this was gold fleeing Europe, but it was also newly produced gold. As this huge quantity of idle money capital grew, the financial resources necessary to finance the bloodiest war in human history were being assembled.
The U.S. economy remained stable following the war economy of World War II, unlike the period after World War I. Interest rates on government bonds did not rise at all. They only rose when normal expanded capitalist reproduction resumed after the end of the war economy in 1945-46.
Industrial production was not stagnant between 1933 and 1940; it was more than halved between mid-1929 and mid-1932. After a brief recovery during the first quarter of 1933, production began to slip again.
After Roosevelt was sworn into office, industrial production began to recover with ups and downs until after the gold value of the U.S. dollar was stabilized in 1934. After Roosevelt stabilized the dollar, the rise in industrial production continued at a smooth upward movement until the effects of his deflationary policies, implemented between 1936 and 1937, took full effect following the 1936 presidential election.
From mid-1938, U.S. industrial production resumed its steady rise. But the Depression had created so much unemployment that it wasn’t until the war economy took over in 1941-42 that the industrial reserve army created by the Depression was fully absorbed.
It is claimed that without World War II, the Great Depression would never have ended. In reality, it was ending through the normal operations of the industrial cycle. If the war economy had not come, the Depression would have ended, though high unemployment would have lingered. Commodity prices on the eve of the war economy were still below production prices, as shown by the continuing rise in gold production. (7)
It is possible that the capitalist economic upswing would have been stronger and/or lasted longer if World War II had not occurred.
The contrast between the two post-war periods is not only the difference in market prices relative to production prices. After the price crash of 1920-21, prices were moderately above production prices at the beginning of the economic upturn in 1921, and they were moderately above them in 1946-1947. The difference lies in the fact that the 15 years preceding the outbreak of war in 1914 were among the most prosperous in the history of capitalism. In the years leading up to World War I, there was no accumulation of idle money in the banks, unlike the case in 1946-1947, due to the effects of the Great Depression. This made all the difference in the economics of the two post-war periods.
((1) By its constant agitation for war against Iran, the Zionist entity is setting up the U.S. Jewish community to be scapegoats if war between the U.S. and Iran comes and ends badly for U.S. imperialism, a strong possibility. If the war turns out to be a disaster not only for the Iranians but also for many U.S. families whose members die or are severely injured, and/or if the war is accompanied or followed by mass unemployment, the search for scapegoats will be on. Even before war breaks out, claims are being made by anti-Semites on the far right and among many well-meaning liberals and progressives who believe Israel controls the U.S. (actually, it’s the opposite), causing the U.S. government to put “Israel first and America second.”
It’s not beyond the limits of possibility that, after the Iranian people themselves, the biggest victims will be the Jewish community. This danger is alleviated to the extent that Jews speak out against the U.S.-Israeli war moves against Iran and the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. The official Zionist leaders of the U.S. Jewish community are doing all they can to lead Jews toward disaster by their constant defense of the genocidal crimes of the Zionist entity against Palestinians. The genocide of European Jews led to the genocide of the Palestinian people through the holocaust and the creation of the Zionist entity. If socialist revolution does not intervene in time, the genocide of Palestinians could lead to a genocide of the U.S. Jewish community. (back)
(2) In his career as an active capitalist, Donald Trump operated in the New York real estate market. He often had to deal with corrupt building trade craft unions that various New York mob “families” controlled. The Trump Organization, in many ways, acts like another mob family. Trump himself, recently dubbed “daddy Trump,” has the mannerisms and style of an old-time mob “Godfather.” The notorious lawyer Roy Cohen (1927-1986) played a major role as a kind of mentor for the young Trump. Cohen served as a lawyer for the Trump Organization and also for Senator Joseph McCarthy, where he played a major role in railroading the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Cohen ended his career by serving as a lawyer for the New York mob.
Over the years, the mob families had numerous disputes over how the New York “rackets” would be divided. Sometimes the different families would schedule negotiations. Sometimes agreements were reached, and at other times, they were not. The negotiations sometimes turned out to be a ruse by one family to assassinate another family’s leadership.
Allowing for the difference in scale between a New York mob family and the U.S. world empire, this is what Trump and the Zionist entity did with the Iranians. Instead of the expected negotiations, the U.S. world empire showed up, with the Zionist entity playing the role of gunman, killing civilians and military alike. Near the end of the “fire fight,” the U.S. showed up directly bombing Iranian nuclear sites. Next time negotiations are scheduled, perhaps they will take place, but then again… These are the methods of diplomacy that come naturally to Donald Trump. (back)
(3) For Syria, the situation was even worse than for Venezuela because the U.S. military did not occupy Venezuelan oil fields, but Syrian oil and grain growing regions are occupied. (back)
(4) Commodities needed to reproduce the capitalists are necessary to maintain capitalist reproduction. If we imagine that instead of capitalism, society is organized on a communist basis, where all people without disabilities are workers, producing goods to maintain a class of non-workers will not be necessary and will not occur. Then, economic expanded production would be able to proceed at a faster pace than is possible with capitalist expanded reproduction. (back)
(5) Mass unemployment never went away in Britain between the crisis of 1920-1921 and the World War II war economy. In Germany, it remained higher than before the war after the mark was stabilized in 1924. Starting in 1929-30, unemployment rose to unprecedented levels across the capitalist world. (back)
(6) The Treasury purchased gold by writing checks to the sellers. The checks were deposited in commercial banks, while the Treasury deposited the gold for safekeeping in Fort Knox and other federal depositories. The result was that the U.S. banking system was flooded with reserves at a time when the demand for money to circulate commodities was still very depressed. This drove interest rates to record lows. (back)
(7) It is difficult to know at any given time the relationship of commodity market prices measured in gold terms to commodity values and production prices. Examining past data, we can infer from the trend in gold production the relationship that prevailed between market prices and production prices. If gold production is in a strong upturn, this is a sign that prices are below production prices, but when gold production is stagnating or declining, this is a sign that market prices are above production prices. If gold production rises moderately, this shows that market prices are close to those of production. Remember, production prices are the level of commodity prices; they equalize the rate of profits on capitals of equal sizes in equal periods of time, regardless of whether the capital produces non-money commodities or the money commodity (back)
A Critique of Crisis Theory 