False Accusations to Blame Workers for Inflation Based on Big Lie
Opposed
to bringing into being a society based on human relations between
humans and humans and humans and nature are the narrow private
interests which own and control the main sectors of the economy and
private enterprises, and the constitutional order which puts everything
at their disposal. These reactionary forces expropriate for their own
private interests a portion of the new value workers produce, including
in the public sector. The portion of the new value they expropriate,
which generally exists as profit and taxes, is in contradiction with
the amount the workers claim individually as their own and collectively
as social programs. To accuse workers of causing a rise in the market
price of social product by their claims on the new value they produce
is false. Changes up or down in workers' claims on the new value they
produce change the ratio in which new value is divided but not its
total.
The ratio between the portion of new value those in ownership and control expropriate and the amount workers claim may change but this in itself does not change the amount of new value workers produce, its price of production or the market price at which the social product is sold.
The amount of new value workers produce is determined by the average work-time necessary to produce a given quality and quantity of social product. Productivity decreases the average work-time necessary to produce a given quality and quantity of social product. This lowers the amount of new value within the given quantity of social product but does not change the ratio between the expropriated value and the claims of workers within the new value. Productivity lowers both the expropriated value and the claims of workers on a given quality and quantity of social product because the amount of new value decreases within the whole.
To
change the ratio between expropriated value and claims of the
workers
does not change the total. Productivity changes the total new
value
within the social product and its price of production. Changing
the
ratio between expropriated value and workers' claims does not
change
the amount of new
value, the price of production of the social product or its
market
price. Other factors are involved in that.
The new value combined with the transferred-value from the material means of production used up in production, the necessary work-time to produce the social product, determine the price of production, which forms the base for its market value and price. Productivity changes the ratio between the old and new value as less new value is needed and more old value is required to produce a given quality and quantity of social product. Productivity generally lowers the amount of necessary new value faster than it increases the amount of necessary old value, which results in less work-time necessary to produce a given quality and quantity of social product generating a lower price of production. The ratio between new and old value and the amounts necessary to produce the same amount of social product are the main factors that change the price of production.
Factors beyond necessary work-time and the price of production such as supply and demand of a given social product, war, tariffs, sanctions, competition among private interests, monopoly control over market prices, and the amount of currency in circulation play large roles in the market price of social product but they do not change the price of production.
Changes in the market price of social product fall under the purview of those in ownership and control of the productive forces, which does not include the working class and its claims on the new value workers produce. Control over the productive forces has become an issue facing the whole of society as this control has slipped out of the grasp of even those who own the productive forces as private property, creating global conditions of anarchy and violence.
The working class is charged by the social conditions of wage slavery to defend its claims on the value it produces. Without doing so, workers would not only acquiesce to a lowering of their living conditions within the economy and society but, as a consequence, contribute to dragging down the society as a whole and forestalling the necessary changes that must be made in relations among humans and with nature, if the society as a whole is to survive.
This article was published in
Volume 52 Number 18 - September 26, 2022
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmld2022/Articles/D520182.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca