§ 7 Monopolization of the means of production by the capitalist class

“In order that a simple commodity economy can be transformed into capitalist production, it is necessary, on the one hand, that the means of production (tools, machinery, buildings, land, etc.) should become the private property of a comparatively limited class of wealthy capitalists; and, on the other, that there should ensue the ruin of most of the independent artisans and peasants and their conversion into wage workers.”

Can you have a middle class capitalist? Does a wealthy class of capitalists have to ruin the small business owner? Is the peasant better off as a wage worker than as a peasant? Industrialization allowed poor peasants to go to the cities and earn more money than they ever could have made on the farm. Bukharin does not address merit and how capitalism can allow someone to go from the depths of poverty to the heights of wealth.

§ 8 Wage Labour

“A spade, an ox, a slave, were for the master all alike tools or utensils, which he could buy, sell, misuse, or destroy, at pleasure.
The wage labourer can be neither bought nor sold. What can be bought and sold is his labour power;”
“The workers are enchained by hunger. Hunger compels them to hire themselves out, that is, to sell their labour power. There is no other solution for the worker; he has no choice.”

This section on wage labor is interesting. Bukharin begins by looking at serfdom and slavery and then describes how capitalism no longer has slavery but it does have wage labor, which is akin to slavery. Because people have to eat they have to perform wage labor. From what I have seen so far there is no upward mobility in Bukharin’s capitalist society. The greedy wealthy capitalist owns an unbreakable monopoly on the means of production and everyone else must suffer as wage laborers with no prospect of acquiring their own private property.

Where does innovation and entrepreneurship fit in? Can’t new ideas lead to upward mobility?

§ 9 Contradictions of production under capitalism

Bukharin continues “When we say 'commodity production' or 'production for the market', what does the phrase mean? It means that individuals work for one another, but that each produces for the market in his own enterprise, not knowing beforehand who will buy his wares.”

This is a far too simplistic approach. It may be accurate to say that a seller of goods might not know the exact individual by name who will buy the product on sale, but the seller will know in general terms what type of person is looking to buy that item and roughly how many people will be interested in buying that item.

“In like manner, when we speak of 'the monopolization of the means of production' or of 'wage labour', we are really talking about the relationships between individuals.”

I think we would all do well to consider what effect our actions have on other people.

§ 10 The exploitation of labour power

“The question now arises, for what reason does the capitalist class hire workers? Everyone knows that the reason is by no means because the factory owners wish to feed the hungry workers, but because they wish to extract profit from them.”

As I read this the refrain of the goal of a corporation is to make a profit for its shareholders echoes in my ears. Luckily everyone can become a shareholder, even the wage laborers. Capitalism allows more upward mobility than serfdom, autocracy, or communism. An entrepreneurial spirit and small business creation are hallmarks of a healthy capitalist economy.

With enough persistence in a capitalist society great achievements can be realized. Booker T Washington was born a slave and went on to found a university. He took risks and profited greatly for it. Capitalism rewards those who take risks.

If extracting profit is the only motive why were initiatives like Health insurance, Retirement, or the 8 hour work day ever introduced?

“Herein, moreover, we discern a very interesting characteristic of capitalist society. For society does not itself produce the things which are necessary and useful to it; instead of this, the capitalist class compels the workers to produce those things for which more will be paid, those things from which the capitalists derive the largest profit.”

Bukharin goes on to give an explanation of whiskey and how it serves no purpose other than to make a profit. It is true that if no one ever bought whiskey that it would no longer be produced.

“What the individual factory owner or the individual worker does is of very little interest to us.”

Individuals are not important. It is only the collective that matters.

“The capitalist class hires the working class, the latter being numerically of enormous size. In millions of factories, in mines and quarries, in forest and field, hundreds of millions of workers labour like ants.”

Under communism would people no longer need to work in factories, mines, or quarries? What change would occur for these hundreds of millions of workers?

“Upon surplus value live all the parasites who are bred by the capitalist system.”

Profits are evil. They should not exist. If you are wealthy you are a parasite.

“Squeezing surplus value out of the working class, exploiting the workers, capital continually increases in size.”

Capitalism only works through exploitation and capitalism’s only goal is to increase in size. This paints too bleak a picture of capitalism.