Reviews and Views
Volume One
Nasser Paydar
The main point of Morteza Mohit’s discourse in most of his writings and statements – including in the eighth volume of “Negah” – is that the immersion of several billion workers and the underclass living in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, or any other part of the world in an ocean of hunger, homelessness, unsanitary conditions, lack of education, homelessness, misogyny, prostitution, child slavery, addiction, or any other calamity has nothing to do with the capitalist mode of production. These crimes, these barbarities, these most brutal attacks on the rights and privileges of simple human beings all stem from “backwardness,” from the lack of “free” development of capitalism, and from the insufficient industrial growth in the aforementioned regions! Mohit’s narrative has many supporters in the four corners of the contemporary world. The intellectual representatives, economists and countless theorists of the bourgeoisie, the governments, the rulers and the apparatuses imposing capitalist barbarity on the world working class, all join in this discordant tune. This wide spectrum of defenders of wage labour speak different languages to the working masses of the world and propose different solutions to achieve their common class goals. Naked dictatorship, democracy, religion, liberalism, nationalism, modernism, postmodernism and finally hanging on the name and title of “communism”! Each of them has a calculated and specific application in certain circumstances for different segments of this community. Morteza Mohit, the nationalists who support the former type of Russian and Chinese socialism, and many groups of their later like-minded people continue to use and actually misuse the latter language and container – the name “communism!” Why?
In response to this question, many topics have been proposed. I, for my part, have addressed this issue more or less in several places – including in the fifth issue of “Simay Socialism”, in a review of an article by Bijan Rezaei. The aim of the present article, first of all, is to address a communist critique of Morteza Mohit’s national populist narrative about the capitalist mode of production and to expose his campaign to distort Marx’s teachings.
Capitalist Production: The Marxist and Nationalist Narratives
In analysing the capitalist mode of production, Marx begins with the commodification of labour power. He considers the confrontation of capital with wage labour and the process of surplus value production to be the real characteristic of this mode of production. According to Marx, all other features and functions of the capitalist system can be explained in the light of this essential characteristic. Competition, the process of forming the general rate of profit, how surplus value is distributed among different sectors of capital, the downward trend of the rate of profit, crisis, the various stages of globalization, the international division of labour of capital, how capitalist societies develop in each period of capitalist globalization, are all consequences of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, and it is in reference to this relationship that the anatomy and real recognition of each of them becomes possible. None of these phenomena or any other phenomena occurring in the history of capitalist development can be our starting point and reference point in the analysis of the capitalist system. For example, competition, with all its importance in capitalist economies, is in no way representative of this mode of production, and its intensity, weakness, freedom, and monopoly do not indicate the presence or absence, or the dominance or non-prevalence, of wage labour in a society. This rule also applies to other tendencies or laws corresponding to the reproduction of capitalist relations. The existence or dominance of capitalist production in this or that part of the world cannot be explained by the number of industrial units, the degree of growth of labour productivity, or the level of management and technical ability of people in planning the accumulation and reproduction of capital. Most banal of all, the dominance or non-predominance of the capitalist mode of production in a society cannot be judged by the birthplace and nationality of the capitalists, the good or badness of the products, the competitive power of social capital, or other such factors! The process of development and dominance of this mode of production in different societies, at different periods, and in all its details does not follow a single formulation. The characteristics of the passage from the stage of primitive accumulation of capital in all regions of the world have not been entirely the same, and the process of the formation of the capital pole, the commodification of labour power, or the dispossession of small producers in all societies has not occurred in a completely homogeneous and consistent manner at different stages of the international development of capitalism. None of these characteristics or distinctions negates or proves the capitalist basis of the mode of production in a society. Capitalist production embodies the unity of the production process and the process of value expansion, that is, the process of surplus value production. Marx says in this regard:
“In the discussions which this subject has given rise to, the fundamental question, namely the specific difference of capitalist production, has often been overlooked. In this production, labour power is not purchased for the purpose of satisfying the personal needs of the buyer by the service of that power or the product which it produces. Its aim is to increase the value of the buyer’s capital, that is, to produce commodities which contain more labour than was paid for and which therefore contain a portion of value for which the buyer has not paid anything and which is nevertheless liquidated by the sale of the commodity. The production of surplus value or surplus value is the absolute law of this mode of production.” (1).
Marx points to this basic indicator and from there proceeds to the general laws of capitalist accumulation, the inherent contradictions of capital, or all the other ups and downs and twists and turns of the process of capitalist development. In Marx’s view, interactions such as the continuous changes in the technical and value composition of capital, the process of capital concentration, the mutual influence of competition and concentration on each other and on the general process of accumulation, the upward trend of the organic composition of capital, the occurrence of crises, the emergence of monopolies and the dominance of finance capital, the export of capital and certain forms of the global division of labour of capitalism, the characteristics of capitalist development of new areas of accumulation in different periods, are all considered consequences of the process of self-expansion of capital. In this view, the small or large share of a society’s social capital in the total surplus value produced by the world working class does not constitute a warrant for determining the dominant mode of production there. The extent of the participation of native farmers in industrial accumulation or the scale of the development of native manufacturers into large-scale manufacturing enterprises does not confirm or refute the capitalist basis of a society. The size or the size of the production sector of the means of production or the production sector of the means of consumption is not an indicator of whether a society is capitalist or not. For those who are familiar with Marx’s anatomy of capital, the analysis of the imperialist conditions of capitalist production is not a matter of mystery at all. Monopolies are the self-expansion of the relation of buying and selling labour power. Finance capital is not a mythical phenomenon and does not rise above the relation of production of surplus value. The dominance of finance capital does not violate the general laws of capitalist accumulation and does not put the capitalist mode of production in contradiction with the process of development of wage labour. For those who understand Marx’s teachings as the solid foundation of the world working class’s communist critique of wage labour relations, the connection of all these approaches and situations with the real content of capital and as consequences of capitalist development is completely obvious.
The exact opposite of what we have stated about Marx and the communist workers of the world’s analysis of the capitalist mode of production or society applies precisely to the nationalists and the nationalist version of capitalism. Here – as befits the thinking and understanding of the bourgeois class – all issues related to the relationship between the purchase and sale of labour power or the process of production of surplus value, the characteristics of the development of capitalism in different periods, etc., are all theorized in an inverted and cryptic manner. Morteza Mohit’s interview with the eighth issue of “Nagah” and, to be more precise, his nationwide campaign in Iranian left and right literature against the movement to abolish wage labour of the working class is a small corner of this theorizing, which can be useful to refer to for a precise insight into the theme of the nationalist understanding of capitalism. Mohit says:
“The development of capitalism in countries like El Salvador – as in many other Latin American countries – means the removal of economic and political power from the hands of 13 large landowning families – families that are supported by the United States and are responsible for numerous and widespread massacres of peasants, workers and toilers in that country – and the industrial and technological growth of the country, the distribution of land among the peasants, the end of sweatshops and slave and semi-slave labour for companies affiliated with large global monopolies, national independence and, as a result, the political, social and economic growth of the country. (And of course, this development of capitalism must necessarily take place under the leadership of the workers and toilers and their related political organizations. Otherwise, it will almost certainly be doomed to failure.)” (2)
In a situation where the entire five continents of the world are filled with the blood and stench of wage labour and the vast majority of the world’s population is suffering from the pressure of exploitation, oppression, poverty, hunger, corruption and brutality of capitalism, Morteza Mohit is spinning a version of capitalist development to improve the lives of the victims of capital! Behind the curtain of complaining about the influence of multinational monopolies, he is preaching the necessity of the survival of capitalism. He is hanging himself on Marx in order to distance the international working class from the Marxian critique of wage labour. He is hiding the reality of the capitalist mode of production from the gaze of the workers of the world and is calling this work the Marxian analysis of the capitalist mode of production! He is attacking capital in order to sanctify capitalism! It separates financial and industrial monopoly from the material capitalist infrastructure of society and places it in front of the working class, in order to camouflage behind it the capitalist mode of production that dominates the working and living conditions of workers.
Morteza Mohit does not consider the majority of the existing world to be capitalist societies and suggests to the workers of this part of the world that instead of fighting against the exploitation they are experiencing, instead of revolutionizing against wage slavery, they should focus on developing capitalism more and more! His view of society and the world is the regretful view of a bankrupt capitalist whose love for greater and greater industrial accumulation has robbed him of sleep and who, unable to compete with the great capitalist monopolies, shouts at the working class that the way they are exploited by capital is not the way of capitalist production! He preaches that the owners of capital should be from the people of the “homeland”, the labour force exploited by capital should be as productive as possible, and if it is not, it is a sign that society is not fundamentally capitalist! The worker whose labour power is used by capital to produce coffee, sugar, and cotton is a worker of the pre-capitalist era! And the capital that consumes his labour power in the process of producing these products is not productive capital! These workers must, in the trenches of the roar of nationalism, make a revolution hand in hand with their capitalist compatriots and replace the “pre-capitalist dependent system” with “independent national capitalism”!!
Morteza Mohit does not adhere to any scientific logic to analyse the prevailing economic relations and the real roots of the exploitation and misery of the inhabitants of El Salvador or other parts of the world. What he says and thinks is the evaporation of material necessities of a kind of capitalist development and expansion, the record of its realization and feasibility has been buried forever in the archives of history since the 19th century. He denies the existing objectivity. He makes the communist criticism of this objectivity the target of hatred and anger. He launches a campaign to distort the teachings of Marx and instil a distorted version of these teachings in the minds of the working masses. He unites against the communists and the working class, with the torturers of the Islamic regime and the murderers of thousands of Iranian communists and workers. The basis of his work everywhere is the promotion of a nationalist narrative of capitalism, the propaganda of nationalist “anti-imperialistic,” and the denunciation of the movement to abolish wage labour by the working class. The environment’s views are not only nothing new, but very, very old. They are a boring rehash of national populist analyses and theories from a century ago. Reading any of his interviews or writings is enough to understand all of his statements, because each of them is a tedious repetition of another, and all of them are the exhumation of the social-democratic DreamWorks of previous eras.
In his book “The Roots of Backwardness”, in a section titled “An Introduction to the Economic-Social Structure of Iran”, Mohit examines the basic characteristics of the capitalist mode of production and, in this regard, introduces all the manifestations and consequences of the laws of capitalist accumulation as the absolute conditions for the existence of this mode of production! The only thing that does not gain any importance, value, or credibility to attract his attention is the commodification of labour power and the purchase and consumption of this power by capital. In his discussion, factors such as the overall and macro-growth of technology, the enormous increase in labour productivity, the comprehensive progress of the process of integrating the tools of labour into modern industrial machinery, the completion of the process of transforming the worker into an appendage of the machine, the management and planning power of productive humans, the overall saturation of society with industrial capital, and most importantly, the national identity of the owners of capital, in addition to some other factors, are all interpreted as existential preconditions for the establishment of the capitalist mode of production!
Two important points need to be emphasized here. First: Morteza Mohit does not examine the aforementioned factors as manifestations or natural functions of the process of reproduction and self-expansion of capital but rather evaluates the deficiency and deficiency or the lack of desirability and idealist of each of them as negating and violating the capitalist mode of production in society! Second: He attributes all his conclusions to Marx’s book “The Basics” in the most unscientific and immoral way. We will discuss the latter point later – as long as the space of this article allows. For now, we will continue our discussion of Mohit’s nationalist version of capitalism. In describing the labour process and attempting to show the distinction between this process in capitalist production and pre-capitalist forms, he emphasizes that any kind of deficit and deficiency in any of the political, civil, cultural, and legal superstructures is a sign of capitalism’s lack of control over the conditions of work, exploitation, and life of humans within society!
“For the analysis of the production system of a society, the degree of development of political and cultural consciousness, the amount of knowledge, technological and scientific ability, and the degree of mastery of the productive people of that society over the forces of nature are decisive.” (3)
In order to understand the real meaning of these statements more precisely, we will quote here a part of the author’s conversation with the magazine “Second Sex”:
“Capitalism cannot be defined by wage labour and commodity relations… In Iran, the capitalist mode of production is weak and underdeveloped. The capitalist mode of production, in which industrial production on a large scale goes hand in hand with science and technology compatible with it and, above that, the capitalist culture and the ruling political system serve it, has not yet been formed in Iran. The political relations that govern Iran are pre-capitalist relations (whether in terms of commercial, brokerage, and non-productive industries, specific manifestations, and owners its key positions, and what its pre-capitalist culture and laws are.)” (4)
The summary of Morteza Mohit’s very explicit and uncomplicated statement is that the low level of specialization of workers in some countries, the low level of political awareness of workers in some parts of the world, illiteracy, poor health, lack of social and welfare facilities, slave labour of children, burial alive and complete disenfranchisement of women, remnants of culture, morality or old traditions and customs, dictatorship, political underdevelopment and all other similar issues are all from the misfortunes of societies that are not capitalist! None of these are the requirements of capitalist domination, they are not produced and reproduced in the process of reproducing social capital, and the liberation of humans from their evils is not dependent on the abolition of wage labour, which requires the complete and total domination of capitalism over society! He even more bluntly shouts that “capitalism cannot be explained by wage labour.” The level of cultural, political, and civil development, in addition to the gigantic growth of industry and technology, is the only criterion for the dominance of capitalist relations in a society! Morteza Mohit does not stop there. He not only rejects the definition of capitalism as wage labour, but also fundamentally does not consider the relationship of buying and selling labour power and the consumption of this power by the capitalist as the source of surplus value production! He analyses surplus value not as the surplus labour of wage workers, but as a phenomenon of the final phase of industrial development and the absolute transformation of specific labour into abstract labour or the complete dissolution of the worker in the machine. He also attributes this conclusion to Marx in a demagogue manner:
“When the skill and expertise of the worker’s work lose their importance and the worker becomes an appendage of the machine, labour is transformed from a concrete form into an abstract form, and this is the type of labour that Marx considers the basis of the production of surplus value.” (5) According to this narrative, a very large part of the international working class, exploited in workshops, factories, farms and production centres not equipped with high technical achievements, does not produce any surplus value for the capitalists! The astronomical figures of profit that they produce are not surplus value, but “celestial food,” and the huge capitals that buy and consume the labour power of this vast mass of workers are not capital, but deposits for the establishment of charitable and public benefit institutions! As for how the environment tries to irrelevantly and deceptively attribute its baseless conclusions to Marx, it is best to pay attention to this part of Marx’s speech about the labour process and the process of value addition:
“The work which is set as higher and more complicated work in contrast to average work consists in the manifestation of a labour-power into which greater expenditure of provision has been made, and in which the production of that power has required more labour-time, and which is therefore worth more than that of simple labour-power. When the value of this power is higher, its manifestation also certainly requires greater labour, and consequently is embodied in relatively higher values in the same interval of time. But whatever the degree of difference between the work of a spinner and a jeweller, that part of the work by which the jeweller compensates for the value of his labour-power is in no way qualitatively different from the other part of his work which produces surplus-value. Again, as before, surplus-value arises from the quantitative surplus of labour, which itself arises from the prolonged duration of the same labour-process. “In one case, the end comes out of the thread production process and in the other case, from the jewellery making process.” (6)
Morteza Mohit completely distorts Marx’s theory of surplus value, distorts Marx’s teachings on the analysis of civil society and the understanding of the capitalist system, and tries to use all of these teachings in the service of defending wage slavery instead of being a guiding light for the struggle of the world working class against wage labour. The book “The Roots of Backwardness” also empties all of Marx’s statements about the “labour process” of their inner essence by distorting Marx’s theory of surplus value. In describing the labour process and the production of surplus value, Marx correctly and with astonishing precision points to the set of interactions that occur in the direction of the evolution and development of the capitalist mode of production. He says:
“The increase in the productive power of labour and the maximum possible negation of necessary labour is the necessary tendency of capital. The transformation of the instrument of labour into a machine transforms this tendency from potential to actuality. Objectified labour, in the machine, materially confronts living labour as a ruling force and actively takes living labour under its control, and it does this not only by appropriating living labour, but also in the actual process of production. The relation of capital as value that appropriates the value-creating activity is in fixed capital in the form of a machine, which is also formalized as the relation of the use value of capital to the use value of labour power…” (7)
Marx’s explanations here, as elsewhere, leave no room for the likes of Morteza Mohit to distort his words. He discusses the internal tendency of capital. He explains the labour process and the process of transforming the instrument of labour into a machine. He says:
“But as soon as the instrument of labour enters the process of capital production, it undergoes several transformations, the culmination of which is its transformation into a machine, or, better said, into an automatic machine system.” (8)
Marx explains that in the process of capital’s value-added, the basis is the continuous reduction of necessary labour in favour of the continuous increase of surplus labour, and the transformation of the instrument of labour into a machine realizes this tendency. He does not introduce the highest degree of development of the machine as the starting point of the life of capital, on the contrary, he begins with the relationship of buying and selling labour power, and he considers the development of the productivity of social labour through raising the technical composition of capital and the application of the highest scientific and technical achievements available as the effective lever of capital for increasing the amount of relative surplus value in the process of exploiting wage labour power. Morteza Mohit can, along with other intellectual representatives of his class, openly and openly defend the wage labour relationship by insulting Marx and communism; But he does this very subtly – under the cloak of friendship with the workers of the world and adherence to Marx’s words – and this is deeply reprehensible in the customs of free people.
The book “Roots of Backwardness” at the end of all its efforts to distort Marx’s teachings about the process of producing surplus value and the basic characteristics of the capitalist mode of production comes to the material infrastructure of Iranian society and says:
“Now, if we want to examine the structure of Iranian society in a scientific (Marxist) way, we must first find out whether Iran is a producing country, then we must examine these products one by one and see if in the process of their production, where is its knowledge and technology? Where is its planning, planning, management, decision-making power and determination of its fate, so that on that basis we can reach a correct judgment about the economic structure of Iran.” (9)
He then continues:
“To answer this question, we must see whether we discovered oil? That is, do we have the technology and knowledge to discover oil? Have we drilled oil wells? Do we have the technology to drill oil wells and manufacture its complex tools and equipment, advanced universities to advance the science of mining, manufacture well drilling drills with its complex alloys, produce complex chemical solutions necessary for drilling wells, and a thousand and one other practical, technological matters for discovering oil and drilling wells? After drilling an oil well, do we have the technology and knowledge to control the oil eruption, pipe it, and transport it to huge oil tankers? Do we have the knowledge and technology to refine oil (build an oil refinery and produce the machines that produce it) and produce thousands of complex products?” Are we from crude oil? And do we have any power in the global market to sell oil and its products? When we think about the thousand and one questions surrounding this issue, we realize that we do not produce oil, but others produce it for us, and we sell it to them at the price they set. Therefore, the laws governing oil revenue are not the laws of surplus value production, but the law of rent collection.” (10)
The political literature of the “left” since the beginning of the last century has been full of the capitalist nationalist narrative – especially in some parts of the world – but the formulation of this narrative with the clarity we see here is somewhat unique. The author of “The Roots of Backwardness” believes that the process of producing Iranian oil is fundamentally incompatible with the relationship between the purchase and sale of labour power and the process of producing surplus value. The reasons and bases for this claim are also explicitly as follows:
– Those who discovered oil do not have Iranian identity cards and are not of Iranian origin.
– Oil well drilling has not been carried out by Iranian engineers, experts and specialists;
– Oil well drilling technology or the complex industrial tools required for drilling wells have not been produced within Iran and beyond the national borders of the country
– Iranian universities have not been sufficiently developed in the fields of mining science, making drills with complex alloys for drilling wells
– We have purchased the technology for oil containment, piping and transporting it to large oil tankers from other countries
– The production of oil refineries and the production of the machines that produce it have been carried out in a country other than Iran
We observe that Morteza Mohit’s account of the essential role of the degree of labour productivity in the very existence or non-existence of the process of surplus value production is mixed here with another very decisive element. He says with unparalleled frankness that even if the relationship of surplus value production employs the latest achievements of science and industry to promote maximum surplus labour at the expense of necessary labour, there is still no mention of surplus value production by wage labour, simply because the owner of capital is not born in the geographical environment of a certain capitalist homeland! He judges whether a society is capitalist or not by the type of technology of the workshops, the level of equipment of the laboratories, the degree of labour productivity, and most importantly by the birthplace of the capitalists and their “homeland٬!
What level of industrial modernization, the number of students, the degree of specialization of engineers, and the high rate of exploitation of workers are sufficient for them to accept the dominance of capitalist relations? He apparently remains silent; but the whole point of his words is that he does not recognize at least 70 percent of the world’s workers as wage labour exploited by capital! Now, if the question is asked, what is the duty of this huge part of the international working class in conditions where they have suffered from the severity of exploitation, lack of rights, poverty, hunger, and the misery of wage labour? What should they fight against in order to escape from this burning hell of barbarity, to eliminate which mode of production, and to establish which new society? Morteza Mohit’s answer is clear. These workers must work, both as a burden and as a secret to the capitalists who suck their lifeblood day and night, for the capitalist development of the “homeland”, for raising the productivity of labour, for producing a much greater relative surplus value, and in a word, for strengthening the yoke of wage slavery around their waists in every way! The working class of Iran and a large part of the world must do this, because Morteza Mohith and like-minded nationalists like him explain the capitalist system not by the dominance of the relationship of buying and selling labour power, but by the low and high degree of labour productivity and the place of birth of the capitalists!
Another question should also be raised with Mr. Mohit. If the Iranian oil production process does not conform to the wage labour relationship or the capitalist mode of production, then where do the twenty-odd billion dollars of oil revenue of the Iranian capitalist state – in addition to the tens of billions of dollars that accrue to the world capitalist class each year in the course of the production, exchange, and consumption of Iranian oil – come from, from within which labour and production process, from within which mode of material production?! His answer is apparently the same as that given at the end of the quoted paragraph from the book “The Roots of Backwardness.” That all the income from oil is not surplus value but rent. But he does not say from which labour process and mode of production did these massive amounts of “rent” finally emerge? What he calls rent, its process of production, exchange, and consumption, is realized and reproduced within the context of what relations of production? Consider Marx’s words:
“In all forms of society, one particular form of production dominates over the others, and the relations of that particular type influence the other relations of production. We thus arrive at a general background in which all colours float and are nourished. In other words, every atmosphere determines the specific weight of all the particular beings in which they have materialized.” (11) Marx, in a more precise explanation of the matter, notes that:
“For example, among the shepherds certain forms of agriculture are found in a scattered form, which determines the form of land ownership; communal ownership is more or less preserved among them; even industry, with its organization and forms of ownership, is more or less influenced by landed property; even capital itself in the Middle Ages, when it does not have the aspect of pure money capital but takes the form of traditional artisanal instruments of production, is completely influenced by the character of landed property.” (12)
Marx then comes to the point that is particularly relevant to our discussion, and adds:
“In a bourgeois society, the opposite is true: agriculture becomes more and more a simple branch of industry and is completely under the domination of capital. Similarly, in all social forms that are under the domination of land ownership, the land lease still has a dominant natural relationship, while in the forms under the rule of capital, the dominance is with the social element created in the course of history. Renting land without capital has no meaning, while capital can be understood without resorting to land rent. Capital is the all-pervading economic force of capitalist society, capital is both the starting point and the end point, and it should be examined before owning land, and only after studying both of them separately, their mutual relations can be examined. (13)
Reflecting on Marx’s words, we return again to the issue of oil, the mode of production governing the process of oil production, exchange and consumption, and finally Morteza’s conclusions regarding the relationship between this process and the process of surplus value production.
Oil is an industrial product and a very widely consumed energy source in the capitalist world market; a widely needed energy, the cost of which is very low compared to other forms of energy. The cost of producing this product, especially in Iran and the Middle East, is lower than in all other regions of the world. Apart from this, oil resources and the right to extract, produce and sell oil are monopolized by governments or certain companies. These factors together cause oil products to be sold at a price higher than their real price and a much greater surplus value than the amount of surplus value obtained from the exploitation of the labour force involved in its production goes to the capitalist owners of the oil companies. In other words, the total income from oil is nothing but the surplus value obtained from the labour of the working class; But a large part of this surplus value is produced not by a certain number of Iranian oil workers, but by other sections of the international working class. What is happening here is the self-crystallization of one of the most obvious and natural general laws of capitalist reproduction, namely the system of distribution of surplus value among the different spheres of accumulation or the different sections of world capital. Marx examines this natural law of the capitalist system in detail at two separate levels, first in the case of the averaging of the rate of profit among the different capitals of a given field of production or of the total social capital, and then in relation to the surplus profit resulting from specific natural and artificial monopolies. The result of his lessons is that:
First. “The capitalists of the various spheres of production receive the value of the capital they have employed when they sell their commodities; but they do not recover the surplus-value produced in the particular sphere of production of those commodities, but only a part of the total surplus-value which has been produced by the total capital of society in all spheres of production at a given time, and which falls equally to each unit of this total capital.”
Second. “Some particular spheres of production may enjoy special conditions of monopoly, by which they prevent the value of their commodities from being converted into prices of production and their profits from being converted into average profits. It is evident that capitals enjoying these special conditions of monopoly obtain profits above the average profits of social capital.” (14)
The important point is that the additional profit resulting from the monopoly conditions of production, regardless of the amount and at any astronomical rate, is ultimately the added value resulting from the exploitation of wage workers. The surplus value produced by the working class of Iran and the world is transformed into additional capital in the hands of domestic and foreign capitalists and enters the social capital reproduction process through various channels. In the fourth economic program of the Shah’s regime, which was implemented since 1968, 64% of the total government investments in various sectors of industry and agriculture, water and electricity, road and construction, oil and gas, and communications have been from oil added values. This ratio increased again in the fifth economic plan and increased to 80% of the total constant capital of the government sector. Apart from this, a significant part of the oil revenues has always been spent in the form of various types of subsidies in order to raise the capital’s profit rate and help the development of capitalist accumulation.
“The laws governing oil revenues,” says Mohit, “are therefore not the laws of surplus value production, but the law of rent collection.” He would have been better off understanding these laws if, instead of referring to Ricardo, he had listened to Marx’s statement about the necessity of changes in land rent under conditions of the dominance of the capitalist mode of production.
“It is necessary and essential that what is the root of landed property, that is, the filthy profiteering, should appear and manifest itself in the dogmatic form of its origin; it is necessary that immovable monopoly should be transformed into movable and restless monopoly, that is, competition, and that lazy enjoyment of the fruits of the suffering and toil of others should give way to a lively trade in commodities; and finally, it is necessary that in this competition, landed property in the form of capital should show its dominance both over the working class and over the owners who have gone bankrupt or have grown and prospered according to the laws governing the movement of capital. Thus, the medieval proverb, “There is no land without a master,” gives way to the proverb, “Money knows no master,” a proverb that expresses the dominance of inanimate matter over mankind.” (15)
His problem, however, is not simply his inability to understand the concepts of surplus value and rent. A more complex and insoluble problem torments him. He is dissatisfied with the inadequate place of his capitalist homeland in the global capitalist division of labour. He is pained by the fact that the social capital of his homeland has not achieved a production capacity equal to that of the greatest industrial monopolies of the world. The higher and higher rate of surplus value of the large and small capitals of his Aryan homeland does not satisfy him. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, after several hundred years of the global development of the capitalist mode of production, he still dreams of the “free growth” of capital and the consolidation of the foundations of “independent national industry” in every part of the world. Mohit is so rebellious about the insufficient competitive power of the social capital of his “homeland” and the undesirable labour productivity of a large part of his country’s capital that he prefers to deny the basis of capitalism in society altogether and to call on the 40 million collective members of the Iranian working class – who have been wiped out of existence for decades under the pressure of the hardships of wage labour – to fight for the development of wage slavery! After proving that “Iran is not an oil producer!” and “the oil production process does not correspond to the process of surplus value production or the capitalist mode of production!”, he adds:
“Of course, we produce carpets, we produce carpets, we produce barley and other grains, fruits and legumes, we also have livestock and… but we need to see how these products are produced… we need to find out… how many percent of our livestock are kept using modern methods and what methods are used to prepare their dairy products and even pistachios?” How are Kerman’s pistachios planted, cultivated and harvested in comparison with Californian pistachios…” (16)
In Morteza Mohit’s thought, the capitalist mode of production, provided that it is nineteenth-century capitalism, is a human utopia! Here, the highest achievements of science and industry, the most developed universities, the highest level of relative surplus value for capital, the most modern and advanced level of exploitation of labour by capital on the one hand, and widespread social welfare, the sublime growth of culture, the highest level of political freedoms and human rights on the other, and finally the fair distribution of these technical, scientific, political, and social achievements for all the cities and villages of the five continents of the world, all come together in unity. Accordingly, any point on the globe that is deficient in any of these areas will surely suffer from the underdevelopment of capitalism! The environment does not stop there. It considers the introduction of any type of “foreign” technology into automobile, iron and steel, aircraft, computer, or nuclear power plants in these regions, the use of any type of combine harvester or tractor made in a foreign country in the agriculture, industries, and farms of these countries, and the presence of any “foreign” worker alongside the workers of these countries as a definitive sign that that land is not capitalist! He says:
“The growth of the productive forces and the change in the socio-economic structure of a country cannot be assessed on the basis of a few factories assembling automobiles, refrigerators, water heaters, etc. and employing thousands and even tens of thousands of local workers in these factories!”
The author of these words should know that currently more than 65 percent of the population of Iran is made up of the working masses and their family members. This huge population of labour force is exploited in factories and large industries, in farms, in the deadly black holes of carpet weaving, in road and building construction, in the production of water and electricity, etc., in the most pitiful way by the beloved capitalists, the masters of the environment. A large part of them, in hospitals and educational centres, in hotels and restaurants, in shops and other places, sell their labour power as a necessary condition for the reproduction of the total capital to the unproductive part of social capital. The capitalist mode of production has determined and continues to determine the dominant mode of production in society, not today, but for 40 years now. The root of all forms of exploitation, poverty, misery, deprivation and oppression of this huge population lies in the capitalist nature of society and in the inhuman relations of wage labour. Millions of innocent children who perish in the deadly black holes of carpet weaving and millions of women whose housework raises the rate of profit of social capital are the free labour force of capitalism. The deprivation of these tens of millions of people from education, health, any kind of freedom, any kind of organization, any kind of facilities, welfare, and social rights all stems from the capitalist mode of production. Whether or not industries are assembled is a matter for nationalists of their kind.
The conscious Iranian worker thinks that in 1994 alone, about 15,000 billion tomans worth of goods and products were produced by his class in various sectors of the economy. But of this amount, only about 4,000 billion tomans were allocated to the total costs of food and clothing, housing, education, health care, social security, the environment, university education, urban and rural renovation, and other necessities of life for workers! The rest of this amount, that is, the incredible figure of 11,000 billion tomans, which increased to 18,000 billion tomans two years later, has somehow been allocated to the capitalist class and the capitalist state in the form of surplus value or profit! The conscious Iranian worker thinks that the basis of wage slavery must be destroyed in order to be able to dominate the product of his labour. Morteza Mohit can boast about the assembly of the country’s capitalist industries and the insufficient growth of capitalism in his homeland and use every platform to preach the necessity of developing “independent capitalism”, but this will be met with the bitter laughter of every conscious worker. The dream of capitalist expansion in the world is the idea of the representatives of a rotten mode of production and social order, which aims at the destruction of humanity. The difference between Morteza Mohit and his ilk, from other defenders of wage labour, is that he is a disillusioned person with the capitalism of previous periods. He considers contemporary capitalism and the imperialist conditions of production not as a product of the historical development of the relationship of surplus value production, but as a deviation of the capitalist order from the civilization-generating nature of this mode of production! He stubbornly demands the return of history and human societies to the capitalism of the nineteenth century!
The contradictions of Mohit’s nationalist narrative of the capitalist system gain greater intensity and depth when it comes to explaining contemporary capitalism. Finance capital, in his analysis, is in conflict with the development of the general bases of accumulation in other parts of the world and with the exploitation of the wage labour power of countries! The huge financial and industrial monopolies treat the surplus value resulting from the unpaid labour of wage workers mercilessly and build a barricade against the development of accumulation and the growth of the capitalist mode of production in the areas of capital export! Imperialism and finance capital are transformed into a mythical entity beyond the earth’s surface. Morteza Mohit does all of this and at every step of this he resorts to distorting Marx’s teachings.
In describing the process of evolution of the commodity economy into the capitalist mode of production, Marx writes:
“The same conditions which create the basic condition of capitalist production – namely the existence of a class of wage-labourers – provoke the transition of all commodity production to capitalist commodity production. To the extent that capitalist commodity production develops, it exerts a trying and dissolving effect on every previous form of production which is primarily aimed at satisfying immediate needs and only transforms the surplus product into commodities. Capitalist commodity production makes the sale of the product the main thing: at first, apparently without attacking the mode of production itself (as, for example, was the first effect of capitalist world trade on peoples such as the Chinese, Indians, Arabs, etc.), and then, where it takes root, it destroys all forms of commodity production, whether based on the personal labour of the producer or solely on the labour of the “The basis is the sale of products as surplus products as commodities. It first generalizes commodity production and then, step by step, capitalization all commodity production.” (17)
Morteza Mohit, but one hundred and fifty years after writing “Capital” under the banner of belief! According to Marx, he undertakes by any means to explain the development of capitalist relations in a society with the development of the capitalist mode of production in that society as heterogeneous and inhomogeneous phenomena; to consider the imperialist conditions of capitalism as preventing the development of the relationship of buying and selling labour power and the capitalization of societies; to conclude that 40 years after the complete commodification of labour power in Iran, the capitalist mode of production has not yet developed and only capitalist relations have developed a little!
“It is possible for the relations of production in a society to be largely capitalist, but the mode of production of that society is not capitalist.” (18)
The movement to abolish wage labour and the importance of the struggle against nationalism
Twenty-three years ago, in the days when millions of Iranian workers, under the pressure of exploitation, dictatorship, injustice and barbarity of capitalism, took to the streets against the capitalist monarchy, the vast section of the Iranian left, by raising the banner of “nationalist anti-imperialistic”, “the contradiction between the people and imperialism”, “the free and independent growth of capitalism”, “breaking off dependence on imperialism”, “the People’s Democratic Republic” and all that Morteza Mohit preaches today, dealt a heavy blow to the development, maturity and progress of the movement to abolish wage labour of the Iranian working class. The working masses of Iran had been fighting a vast and uphill campaign against capitalist exploitation and injustice in various forms for decades before that day. The effective presence of the Iranian labour movement in the political situation of 1941 to 1953 is one of the most vivid and instructive parts of the history of class struggle in our society.
Those who have followed the history of Iran and the course of political events in society from a Marxist perspective also know that the revolutionary movement of 1978 emerged on the height of the economic and strike struggles of the period between 1972 and 1977 among the vast masses of the working class in factories and the outskirts of large cities. The Iranian labour movement – contrary to what Morteza Mohit suggests – was not a phenomenon outside of social equations, ineffective, and devoid of role. In the days following the Bahman Uprising, it was the working class, and only the working class, that challenged the capitalist class and the bourgeois state by forming its councils in factories, by seizing work and production centres and firing employers, by organizing the struggles of the unemployed, by the movement to abolish capitalist ownership of housing complexes and distribute them from house to house, or in many other areas. On that day, under the pressure of Mr. Morteza’s current solutions, opinions and views, the great left wing of Iran dealt the worst blow to the labour movement. Instead of mobilizing the working class in a nationwide council movement against wage labour, instead of asking the workers of oil and electricity, water, iron smelting, mines and workers of all other centres of production and work to place their council power against the capitalist class and the capitalist government everywhere, instead of taking steps in the direction of organizing the movement to abolish wage labour of the working class, yes to Instead of all these, they propagated “the anti-imperialism of the petty bourgeoisie”, “the progressiveness of the liberal bourgeoisie”, “the necessity of the free growth of capitalism” and the most poisonous and deadly bourgeois illusions among the workers. In the days when the bourgeoisie was mobilizing all its class and international power to suppress all aspects of the Iranian labour movement, people like Mr. Mohit also rushed to the war of the movement to abolish wage labour of the working class, ideological weapons in hand, in the role of bringing firewood to the battle. Today, two decades have passed since that date. The Iranian labour movement must remember what blows it has suffered from the solutions, views, and perceptions of people like Mr. Mohit. Real communists must also not miss any opportunity to expose the anti-labour and anti-communist nature of his words – and those of his ilk – to the workers.
September 2001
Subtitles:
1- Marx, “Capital”, translated by Iraj Eskandari, Volume I, page 708;
2- ” Negah Magazine “, Eighth Edition;
3- Mohit, “Roots of Backwardness”, page 61;
4- “Second Sex”, Volume V, page 88;
5- “Roots of Backwardness”, page 65;
6- “Capital”, Volume I, page 257;
7- Marx, “Grundrisse”, Volume II, page 257;
8- Ibid., page 256;
9- “Roots of Backwardness”
10- Ibid.;
11- ” Grundrisse “, Introduction to Political Economy;
12- Ibid., page 34;
13- Ibid.
14- “Capital”, Volume III, Section on Market Values, Surplus Profit;
15- Marx, “Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts”, page 117;
16- “The Roots of Backwardness”, page 76;
17- “Capital”, Volume II, page 47;
18- ” Negah Magazine “, Book VIII;