76

p Apologetics of capitalism are part and parcel of current anti-communist ideology and propaganda. With capitalism’s positions weakening in the competition with socialism, the ideological defence of capitalism and the concealment of its deep-rooted antagonistic contradictions are becoming one of the main aims of the anti-communists.

p Under the impact of the unfolding class struggle the anticommunists have to modify their methods of ideological defence of capitalism. The theories now being proliferated 77 by them differ essentially from their former direct apologia of capitalism. One of the most significant changes now taking place in bourgeois social science is the broad dissemination of the theory of capitalism’s “transformation”.

p Bourgeois ideology had always championed capitalism, which it proclaimed as the only possible social system. Capitalism was regarded as an order that most fully conformed to the nature of man and that had allegedly always existed in human society. Private property, private enterprise and private profit were extolled as the natural foundation of society. Society’s existence was said to be inconceivable without them.

p To this day some bourgeois theorists continue to defend capitalism in the same way. But these direct means of ideologically championing capitalism are steadily losing their value to the apologists of present-day Western society.

p The various theories claiming that the nature of capitalism has been regenerated, that the exploiting substance of bourgeois society has been modified and that it has surmounted social injustice are now among the most popular ideological myths of imperialism. Their ultimate aim is to prevent society’s socialist reorganisation.

p The switch to “transformation” is due mostly to the crisis of bourgeois ideology, politics and morals. Capitalism has still further discredited itself in the eyes of broad public opinion. In this psychological climate it has become practically impossible and dangerous to champion capitalism under its own name. For that reason its high priests have begun to propound the theory that capitalism is “ disappearing”.

p The different theories about capitalism’s “transformation” are counterposed chiefly to Marxism-Leninism. It is asserted that owing to its own properties capitalism is turning into an industrial, post-industrial or mixed society that cannot be considered capitalist. These theories are used by the bourgeoisie in order to slow down the working-class struggle against capitalism.

78

p According to the proponents of these theories, the main manifestations of capitalism’s “transformation” are modifications in private property, the social structure of modern capitalist society and the functions of the state.

p “Transformation” of private capitalist property. This theory asserts that in the course of capitalism’s evolution private property automatically disappears and on this basis proclaims as senseless any demand for its revolutionary abolition.

p Bourgeois sociologists offer three main arguments to prove the theory of the “transformation” of private property.

p This “transformation”, they argue, is expressed, first, in the separation of management from the right of property, second, in its diffusion and “democratisation” and, third, in its “socialisation”. Together these processes are, allegedly, radically reshaping private capitalist property, stripping it of its former character as the means of exploitation of man by man.

p Bourgeois ideologists counterpose the separation of management from the right of ownership to the Marxist- Leninist proposition of the growing concentration of property in the hands of the capitalist elite. They are trying to make people believe that inasmuch as the bourgeoisie is being “progressively removed” from power and steadily losing control of the implements and means of production there is no longer any sense whatever in fighting the capitalist proprietors. In this situation a struggle against capital would be absurd because the capitalists are ceasing to occupy the dominant position in society. In the industrialised capitalist countries, they say, power is increasingly concentrating in the hands of “non-proprietors”—civil servants and corporation managers. This is leading to the disappearance of the contradiction between labour and capital, and since the capitalists are allegedly being removed from power, a contradiction is appearing between the managed and the managers.

79

p Bourgeois ideology sees the substance of the separation of management from the right of ownership in the growing role played by salaried personnel in the management of private enterprises.

p Actually, the undisputed growth of the role played by salaried personnel in capitalist society by no means weakens the dominant position of the capitalist proprietors. All the functions and rights of salaried managers are in fact and judicially founded on the power and rights of the private proprietors hiring them and obliging them to fulfil managerial duties in their name. It cannot be denied that the importance of the managerial and technical personnel of capitalist enterprises has grown. However, the authority enjoyed by this personnel does not give it the power to abolish the right of the private proprietors to receive dividends, to change the purpose of capitalist business (that of obtaining private profit) or to ignore the other interests of the proprietors.

p If it deals with private or state-capitalist property the management of a capitalist enterprise cannot act in the interests of the people. Private proprietors, even if they have removed themselves entirely from activity (although these are in the minority), continue their parasitical appropriation of incomes. What has been separated from them is not property but managerial labour, which in most cases was formerly performed by the entrepreneur himself. However, this cannot be regarded as evidence of any change in the substance of capitalist private property.

p The wealth controlled by the financial oligarchy is unremittingly growing. For instance, in the early 1960s, 50 of the top financial groups of the bourgeois world were in control of assets valued at 529,300 million dollars, while in 1967 assets totalling 590,400 million dollars were controlled by only 20 of the largest monopoly groups.^^38^^ During the period from 1960 to 1970 the wealth possessed by 20 of the most powerful groups in the capitalist world more than doubled.

80

p The self-removal of the private proprietors from managerial duties unquestionably is a new element but it does not transform capitalism. The proprietor class has thereby , accelerated its conversion into a parasitical class, which nonetheless retains supreme economic and political power.

p The growth of the role played by employees of all ranks is an essential condition of socialist reorganisation. The mechanism of day-to-day management operating without the direct participation of the proprietor class is taking shape in society. For that reason the separation of management from property does not signify a qualitative “ transformation” of capitalism but it nonetheless leads to the development of the prerequisites of socialism in capitalism.

p As evidence of capitalism’s transformation bourgeois ideology gives, in addition to the separation of management from property, the development of joint-stock forms of capital. The appearance and growth of this capital are proclaimed as the “diffusion” and “democratisation” of private | property.

p ’

p Bourgeois ideology seeks to persuade people that instead of concentrating, as forecast by the Communists, private property is “deconcentrating”. Actually, it falsifies the substance of the process of “diffusion” when it describes this as the “diffusion” of private property. Ownership of shares is not the same as the ownership of factories, and ; therefore in all cases it does not mean ownership of private property. It can turn into shared private ownership of the means of production only when the quantity of shares makes it possible for their owner to acquire real power over these means.

p The facts show that the “diffusion” of shares is taking ; place not through the elimination of large shareholders, whose role and importance are rising. Researchers agree that the richest families in the USA have at their disposal at least 77.5 per cent of all the privately owned shares and 65 per cent of the shares in joint-stock companies. During 81 the past 40 years only the wealth of, for instance, the Rockefellers has increased eight-fold, of the Morgans three-fold, of the Fords seven-fold, of the Mellons eight-fold and of the Du Fonts roughly 15-fold. As a result, the key positions in the US economy are occupied by only a few hundred big monopoly families, whose wealth runs into astronomical figures.^^39^^

p In summing up their assertions about proprietors losing power and about the “democratisation” of property, some bourgeois ideologists draw the conclusion that this is a specific process of capitalist “socialisation” of private property.

p They see this “socialisation” first in the above-mentioned “diffusion” of property and its separation from power and, second, in the management of private property by the state through innumerable social institutions. This latter is alleged to be “socialisation”.

p Whereas formerly the capitalist could arbitrarily make decisions concerning the management of his enterprise, today, declare the proponents of the theory of the “ socialisation” of private property, every decision of the management reflects the opinion and will of many persons and institutions. They include managers, trade unions, the government, consumers’ unions, the Church, local self- government bodies, and so on. Consequently, they assert, one cannot speak of the predominant will of private proprietors. Their role has declined and, therefore, private property, and with it capitalism, have “transformed” into a “ socialised” society.

p The French economist Francois Perroux was one of the first to write of the “socialisation” of private property. In his view “private ownership of the means of production is strongly corrected by public control.... Private enterprises are being consciously placed into the intricate apparatus of collective production”.^^40^^

p In his Economics, Peace, and Laughter the US economist John K. Galbraith seriously writes of the “socialisation” of 82 no less than the New York Stock Exchange.^^41^^ From the theory of the “socialisation” of private property some bourgeois economists and sociologists draw the conclusion that this is a much more effective way of achieving a more just distribution of wealth than nationalisation. From their point of view, the West’s social problem is now not in the very fact of private property but only in the way that property is utilised. Property, they hold, should be not nationalised but “socialised”, in other words, state intervention must be used to rule out the possibility of private property being used for personal enrichment by obligating proprietors to invest profits and manage property not for personal gain but in the interests of society. In this way, they maintain, the problem of social parasitism, for instance, will be resolved without a revolution, because, as they put it, parasitism lies not in the appropriation of unearned income but in the selfish use of that income.

p They only make a play of the term “socialisation” so as to persuade people that state-capitalist intervention in the private capitalist economy turns it into a socialist economy.

p In itself, the theory that the state plays a growing role in the economy of the capitalist countries does not evoke objections. But the bourgeois ideologists avoid the crucial question of the social character of the state and whose interests it defends in participating in the process of reproduction, in regulating and programming the economy. The strengthening of state-monopoly capitalism allows the financial oligarchy to oppress the entire nation.

p However, the growing property distinctions and the concentration of most of the means of production in the hands of a small elite explode the fiction about the “ democratisation” and “socialisation” of private property.

p For instance, in West Germany there were in 1969 a total of 15,404 millionaires with an aggregate fortune of 49,400 million marks. In the same year, in Denmark the number of millionaires was 6,500, or 0.8 per cent of the population, 83 but they owned 25 per cent of all the private accumulations in that country. In 1970, the Netherlands had 5,451 millionaires, of whom 99 had a capital exceeding 10 million guilders. In Finland, the wealthiest 5 per cent of the employed population receives 22 per cent of the incomes, while the poorest 20 per cent have to rest content with 2.5 per cent. In Sweden, one-third of industry is controlled by 15 families. In Brazil 5 per cent of the population receives one-third of all the incomes in the country.

p Private property can only be transformed by its replacement by public, socialist ownership of the implements and means of production. This signifies a socialist revolution which, naturally, can only be accomplished by the classes that are not interested in preserving private property.

p The “transformation” of the social structure of capitalism, according to the proponents of this view, is further manifested in bourgeois society’s social structure in the “ deproletarianisation” and “integration” of the professional groups. This, they say, is giving rise to a “new” society that is free of social contradictions and class distinctions.

p The anti-communist orientation of this theory lies in the striving of its proponents to refute the Marxist-Leninist idea that in capitalist society polarisation is steadily intensifying as a result of social differentiation and the mounting class antagonisms between the working people and the monopoly elite. Contrary to the facts, bourgeois ideologists maintain that the classes and, generally, all professional groups are “drawing together”. Capitalism’s “ transformation”, they assert, is accompanied by society’s progressive integration fostered by the people’s “fundamental community of interests”, and by the development of class co-operation and social partnership between employers and the working people.

p This, they argue, obviates the need for a socialist revolution as the means of resolving the problems of social relations and the abolition of the poles of wealth and poverty.

84

p Much as the arguments that the capitalists have lost their power over their property, the theory of the “ transformation” of the social structure hides the existence of an authoritarian ruling class in modern capitalist society. “During the earlier stages of industrialisation,” writes the US sociologist Gerhard E. Lenski, “the entrepreneurial class appeared destined to be the dominant class in new societies. Today this is no longer the case. This class had already vanished in some industrial societies and is slowly but surely declining, in both size and power, in most of the rest.”^^42^^

p Lenski, Aron and others of their school claim that the modern working class differs sharply from the proletariat seen by Karl Marx. The workers being “integrated” into bourgeois society cease to be opponents of capitalism and begin to identify their interests with those of their capitalist enterprise.

p Lenski and his US colleague A. Kenkel have evolved the “social continuity” theory, according to which in US society the distinctions between the nearest social strata are disappearing and, although the poles still exist, the transition from one strata to another proceeds smoothly, without perceptible intermediate stages.

p In an industrialised capitalist society the “ transformation” of social relations, the bourgeois ideologists endeavour to persuade the working people, is finally undermining the prospect of a socialist revolution on account of the disappearance of social antagonisms and the setting in of a “class peace”. They depict the class struggle as simple competition for a larger share of the national income, as an exception, rather than the law of antagonistic society. They argue that the class struggle is “possible” only in connection with some shortcomings in national legislation and that it expresses the “quest for equilibrium” between the various social forces.

p The facts refute the myth of the bourgeois ideologists that the social structure of industrialised capitalist society is 85 “transforming” in the direction of the abolition of class contradictions.

p “Transformation” of the state. The criticism of the bourgeois state by the communist and, earlier, to a certain extent, by the social-democratic movement has effectively exposed it as an instrument of the privileged classes, of the bourgeoisie, and chiefly of the monopolies. The peoples can no longer believe that the bourgeois governments have always been concerned with their interests. This has induced bourgeois ideology to assert in its defence of the bourgeois state that it is “reforming” and turning from a class instrument into an organ serving the interests of the whole of society. A theory widely propounded today in bourgeois economic and sociological literature is that the bourgeois state is undergoing a cardinal change in the direction of a “ welfare state”.

p The anti-communist content of this theory lies in its attempt to disprove the Marxist-Leninist theory that the bourgeois state is an instrument of class rule and of the suppression of the working masses. While the Communists are seeking to abolish the bourgeois state and create a new, socialist state, because the interests of the working masses cannot be safeguarded in any other way, bourgeois ideologists assert that the present “transformation” of the bourgeois state conforms to the interests of the working masses.

p The pivot of bourgeois ideology’s interpretation of the “transformation” of the state is its thesis about the contradiction between the capitalist class and the bourgeois state. It is alleged that the modern bourgeois state is purposefully “modifying” capitalism in accordance with the requirements of the scientific and technological revolution. Moreover, it is accomplishing this in the interests of the whole of society, even in spite of the wishes of the propertied classes. As a result of this “revolutionary” activity of the bourgeois state, “unrestricted” capitalism in the industrialised capitalist nations has now been superseded by capitalism whose power is 86 “restricted” by the state, which is forcefully intervening in the political and economic life of bourgeois society in the interests not of the bourgeoisie but of the entire population. For that reason, declares, for instance, the British sociologist, Karl Raimund Popper, it is quite absurd to identify the system of modern democracies with the system which Marx called capitalism.

p The theory of “political pluralism” is opposed to the scientifically proved fact that the power of the monopolies is increasingly intertwining with the power of the imperialist state in a single state-monopoly system of domination. State power takes into account and integrates the interests of the “pluralist groups” that bring pressure to bear on it.

p By offering this theory the bourgeois theorists speculate on the actual fact of the imperialist state’s growing activity. The existence of the state-monopoly sector, state fiscal, tax and credit policy, state orders to private monopolies, state funding of research and development, state economic development programmes and much else are indeed ways and means by which the modern imperialist state influences the actual course of capitalist reproduction.

p However, the apologists of imperialism interpret these changes as the “transformation” of capitalism, declaring that in this way the state takes the interests of the working people into consideration. They argue that today the imperialist state is able to assure “full employment”, “equitable distribution of incomes”, “participation in decision making”, “the modernisation of the economy” and “improved living conditions”. The various theories being offered today include the theories of the “global management of the economy” and “co-ordinated action” by the state, entrepreneurs and trade unions (West Germany), the theory of a “co-ordinated economy” (France) and the theory of a “welfare state” (USA).

p The “transformation” of capitalism, which the bourgeois theorists tirelessly proclaim, proves to be nothing more than the formation of a system of state capitalism in the 87 industrialised capitalist countries. Life is showing that under statemonopoly capitalism the working people remain as bereft of the right to democratic participation in decision making as in the past. Even bourgeois authors have to admit that the formal bourgeois-democratic rights and freedoms today “remain outside the gate of their factories”. But these rights are constantly infringed upon. The authoritarianism of a single and concentrated political power is growing. The political and economic rule of the monopolies is accompanied by a steady intensification of exploitation and social inequality.

p On closer examination the “revolution in incomes”, which the apologists of capitalism constantly talk about, spells out an intensification of social polarisation, the further enrichment of society’s elite and continued privations and difficulties for the working people in town and countryside and for the non-monopoly strata of society.

p Typical in this respect is the sharp criticism by the Danish Social-Democrat Bent Hansen of the theory that as industrial development proceeds class distinctions are erased. In noting the rise of the living standard in Denmark, he writes: “It would be wrong to believe that thereby it has become possible to abolish social distinctions, which actually are indicators of the exploitation of some by others.” He criticises the assertion that “economic and technological development resolves the problems of the old society: the lower classes disappear, the working class is no longer a working class but is becoming a kind of middle class”. Comparing the share of social wealth going, on the one hand, to the mass of the people and, on the other, to the privileged elite, he draws the following conclusion: “Actually, there has been no redistribution in favour of the lower-paid categories of people.” As formerly, there is a solid, exclusive higher class at one pole, and a lower class at the other. While one-third of the Danish tax-payers, Hansen writes, have no savings and no real estate, one-tenth own twothirds of all the savings and real estate of the country. “The 88 Danes have made no progress whatever toward the creation of a society of equality,” Hansen concludes.^^43^^

p The scientific and technological revolution is creating the possibilities for fully satisfying the vitally necessary and socially important requirements of the people. But this is hindered by the capitalist system, which uses scientific and technological achievements as a means of deriving monopoly profits. In this situation the concept of a “welfare state” is nothing less than ideological bluff masking the reality of capitalism. The slogans of “democracy” and “humanism”, which the anti-communists borrow from progressive forces, cannot conceal the nature of the capitalist system, which has entered the period of its historical eclipse. Militarism, political repressions, encouragements of fascist tendencies, police brutality, and social demagogy are only some of the methods used by the bourgeoisie to bolster its role.

p Bourgeois rule intensifies exploitation. The moral climate of capitalist society is essentially anti-humane.

Whatever the efforts bourgeois theorists make to evade this conclusion, inventing various theories about capitalism’s “transformation”, the “welfare state” and so on, experience bears out the untenability of these inventions.