END OF GERMAN CAPITALISM
selves on the basis of exchange,
independently of man's will.
•
Only by pursuing this course is it possible to solve the funda–
mental puzzle-how in capitalist society,
in which each man
thinks for himself
and
no one thinks for all,
are created the rela–
tive proportions of the various branches of economy indispen–
sable to life....
This means that, after all, chaos is not chaos at all, that in
some way it is
regulated automatically, if not consciously.
...
By accepting and rejecting commodities, the market, as the arena
of exchange, decides whether they do or do not contain within
themselves socially necessary labor, and thereby determines the
ratios of the various kinds of commodities necessary for society.
199
This seems to me a reasonably accurate description of how
capitalism works. There are two main elements: ( 1) production
is regulated by exchange, that is, by the prospect of the individual
and corporate property owners making a profit by selling their
goods on the market; (2) this market regulates "not consciously"
but as an impersonal, autonomous mechanism working "inde–
pendent of man's will."
In Germany today the market still exists, but it has lost its
autonomy: it does not determine production, but is used merely as
a means of measuring and expressing in economic terms the pro–
duction which is planned and controlled by the Nazi bureaucracy.
The old capitalist
forms
exist, but they express an entirely new
content. Since 1936, production in Germany has not been deter–
mined by the market but by the needs of
Wehrwirtschaft:
guns,
tanks, shoes, steel, cement are produced in greater or lesser quan–
tities not because there is more or less prospect of making profits
on this or that commodity, but because this or that is considered
more or less useful for making war.
Economically,
this is produc–
tion. for use, the use being, of course, a highly undesirable one
from the
social
point of view. Nor is this production controlled by
amarket mechanism working "independent of man's will" but by
a bureaucratic apparatus which
plans
production (as against the
well-known "anarchy" of capitalist production) and which con-
'Marx's
Capital
begins: "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist
IIOde of production prevails presents itself as 'an immense accumulation of com–
IIOdities'." A commodity Marx describes as "a very queer thing, abounding in meta–
physical subtleties and theological niceties." This is because commodities. are "both
objects
of utility and, at the same time, depositories of value," that is, they exist as
both
"use values" and "exchange values." Since they obviously possess use value
mder
slavery, feudalism or any non-capitalist form of economy, it is their exchana;e
11lue which gives them their specifically capitalist character.
