9: The Primitive Accumulation of Capital

Under the socialist system which formerly existed in the Soviet Union, the working class was the collective owner of the means of production of industry.

As has been demonstrated in the previous sections, the Soviet working class has now been expropriated of these means of production, which have become the effective property of a new class of Soviet capitalists in the form of directors of industrial enterprises.

This process is essentially similar to that which Marx, describing the development of capitalist society out of feudal society, called the primitive accumulation of capital:

"The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour... The process, therefore, that clears the way for the capitalist system can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of this means of production; a process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage-labourers. The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production".

(K. Marx: "Capital", Volume 1; London; 1974; p. 668).

10: The Sale of Labour Power

Marx defined labour power as human capacity for labour:

"By labour power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use - value of any description".

(K. Marx: "Capital", Volume 1; London; 1974; p. 164).

A worker who does not control means of production has no commodity he can sell in order to live except his labour power:

"In order that a man may be able to sell commodities other than labour power, he must of course have the means of production".

(K. Marx: ibid., Volume 1; p. 165).

Since, as has been demonstrated, the Soviet workers have been expropriated of the means of production, they have now no means of living except to sell their labour power to those who control the means of production -- that is, to the new class of Soviet capitalists.

Naturally, contemporary Soviet propagandists who wish to present Soviet society as "socialist", deny that Soviet workers sell their labour power, deny that labour power in the Soviet Union is a commodity:

"In a socialist country (i.e., in the contemporary Soviet Union -- WBB) the economic laws that make labour power a commodity do not exist".

(E.N. Zhiltsov: "Concerning the Subject of the Economics of Higher Education", in: "Vestnik Moskovskogo universiteta: Seriia ekonomika" (Journal of Moscow University: Economic Series), No. 1, 1973, in: "Problems of Economics", Volume 17, No. 5; September 1974; p. 76).

"Under socialism (i.e., in the contemporary Soviet Union -- WBB) labour power is not a commodity". (V.M. Batyrev: "Commodity-Money Relations under Socialism", in: "The Soviet Planned Ecoomy"; Moscow; 1974; p. 156).

Such propagandists refer to Soviet workers as "disposing over" their labour power -- suggesting that the right to do so is a "benefit" enjoyed by Soviet workers and not by those in orthodox capitalist countries:

"Under socialism,... a working person constantly retains the right to dispose freely over his labour power. He realises this right by concluding a labour contract with enterprise". (A. Sukhov: "Labour Mobility and its Causes", in: "Nauchnye doklady vysshei shkoly: Ekonomicheskie nauki" (Scientific Reports of Higher Schools: Economic Science), No. 4, 1972, in: "Problems of Economics", Volume 17, No. 7; November 1974; p. 29).

But since Soviet workers "dispose over" their labour power by "disposing of" it to enterprises in return for money -- wages -- the term "disposition" must be regarded as a mere euphemism for "sale".