Main Street vs Wall Street

Populist Economic Concepts and Jargon

- K.C. Adams - 

In the context of the economic crisis in the U.S. and worldwide and the unravelling of many crimes

of monopoly capital in its scramble for big scores, a populist jargon has arisen in the mass media to

divert workers from economic science and an elaboration of their own pro-social program. This

 populist jargon includes the use of terms such as  Main Street  and  Wall Street  as concepts

representing an economic reality. Various political forces have begun to associate these populist

conceptions with programs such as  economic stimulus to deal with the economic crisis and how the

working class movement should defend itself.

Populism takes various features of the economic reality out of their complex relationships and reality

and conceptualizes them as materially independent of the whole. For example the populist concept

Wall Street , which is meant to reflect  capital  owned by "humongous bankers and brokers" as one

 blogger puts it, assumes a standing apart from its existence as an unequal social relation

interconnected with all other social relations bound within a single indivisible capitalist mode of 

 production.

Populist jargon gives  Wall Street  and Main Street  ( Main Street  being "the working class and middle

strata, and productive and small capitalists not connected to humungous bankers and brokers")

independent mystic qualities distinct from their reality as creations of social relations under the

domination of monopoly capital. Populism positions the working class not in its captive social

relation labour  but as an independent material quality on  Main Street  in opposition to an independent

material quality called  Wall Street . This denies the reality that the working class, in its present form

of chattel-labour, cannot exist outside its unequal social relationship and interconnection with

monopoly capital in general unless it breaks free from that unequal social relation through revolution.

Populism conceptualizes labour and various forms of capital as materially independent of each other 

and the whole. An assumption of populism is that the working class must recapture its "share" of the

social product to which it is entitled, the "part" of the social product that it has produced, which

represents its value as chattel-labour bought on to the labour market. Populism does not generally

explain the "part" of social product that the working class has supposedly not produced, leaving the

assumption that it mysteriously arises from capital itself.

The populist supposition extends to the means of production found on  Main Street , which are

considered materially independent from  Wall Street  and in need of recapturing their share of the

social product for which they are responsible and which has been diluted or lost by  Wall Street 

mostly within the realm of circulation.

 

These assumptions are very prominent among both left and right-wing U.S. populists such as

Republican Ron Paul and his "campaign for liberty," which includes eliminating the US Federal

Reserve. Ron Paul along with Canadian independent broker Bill Cara and others have made the big

 banks and monopoly capital traders the target of attack separating themselves, which include small

capital traders and owners of capital, the  real  economy and workers of  Main Street  from the

monopoly capitalist system and its relations of production.

Using the jargon of the populists, was Enron not only a  Main Street  power producer but also a  Wall 

Street  manipulator and speculator? In truth, all the big monopolies are both  Main Street  and  Wall 

Street  combined with political state power, and small owners of capital and traders are completely

intertwined and subservient to monopoly capital.

Populists from a different angle give an independent material reality to phenomena such as  economic

 stimulus or Keynesian demand-side economics to divert workers from their own thinking and

elaboration of a pro-social program.

Concessions to populism within the working class and communist movement are of great concern

given the history of politics in the United States and Canada. Populism and exceptionalism have been

at the centre of betrayal, and to allow them one centimetre of space to undermine Marxism-Leninism

and the working class will be devastating. Conciliating with populism means that Contemporary

Marxist-Leninist Thought is neither defended nor developed.

Populism negates among other things the modern definition of the socialized economy, which asserts

that the working class produces all added-value by transforming raw material into use-value. This

use-value is seized by the owners of capital as exchange-value by virtue of the unequal social

relations, which dominate all pores of society, permeate every part of the production, distribution and

circulation processes, and form a unitary whole called the capitalist mode of production. Part of the

seized exchange-value, when realized, is returned to the working class as wages, benefits and

 pensions, which are assumed to be a negative deduction from the total revenue available to the

owners of capital, therefore a cost of production. In capital-centred theory, this deduction for chattel-

labour is considered its value, which represents the cost of producing labour itself and approximates

the contribution of labour to the production process for which it deserves its share. European

socialists have adopted this theory with only one adjustment: the share of labour must be "fair." The

other "independent material parts" of the production process also demand their share. These

independent parts include the realm of circulation, for how can production as exchange- value be

realized without circulating.

With the rise to mature capitalism at the end of the nineteenth century, the share claimed by each

section of those owning capital is no longer an average profit determined by the continuous flow of 

capital within the system towards the greatest profit. Each grouping of capital, ever larger through

concentration and consolidation, uses its insider information, political connections, its overall

 

capacity to dominate other weaker sections and the immensely more powerful military and

 bureaucratic state, as best it can to expand its capital as much and as quickly as possible around the

world. This means that average profit is no longer the norm having been replaced with high profit for 

some and low for others causing greater and more intense crises and wars, uneven development both

nationally and internationally, ever larger monopolies dominating all sectors and imperialist states of 

immense power and control.

Capital-centred theory in particular and thousands of years of class society in general make unequal

social relations appear normal and natural and in the case of capital, the end of history as such. The

unequal relations of production are disguised, broken down into separate parts and given an

independent material appearance, which obscures the essence of the social relations and their 

interconnections. The two most basic unequal social relations of the capitalist mode of production are

capital  and  labour . The segmented parts of the whole include:

- profit of private enterprise in production, which claims its share of realized added-value for its

contribution of capital in the form of means of production;

- profit of private enterprise in the realm of circulation (wholesale, retail and speculative and trading

capital), which claims its share of realized added-value passed on to it from private enterprise in

 production for its contribution in realizing exchange-value and other activity;

- interest, which claims its share of realized added-value for its contribution of borrowed capital;

- ground-rent, which claims its share of realized added-value for its contribution of the earth as

landed private property;

- government, which claims its share of realized added-value for its contribution of protecting the

established relations of production and the most powerful concentrations of capital from the class

struggle of workers defending the rights of all, from the spontaneous and organized pressure to

resolve the fundamental contradiction between the private relations of production and the socialized

forces of production, from the competition of other global monopolies and imperialist states and for 

extending monopoly right and power around the globe;

- workers and middle strata, which claim their share of realized added-value for their contribution as

chattel-labour.

That is the weird wacky world of capital-centred political economy, European socialism and U.S.

 populism, which perpetuate the myth that the socialized economy needs capital, which is

accumulated-value captured in an unequal social relation; and

 

- that the socialized economy needs capital as means of production for new production to take place

and to claim its share of realized added-value as profit of private enterprise at least commensurate

with what it has contributed but much more if possible;

- that the socialized economy needs all the various elements in the realm of circulation to realize

exchange-value and transform it into use-value for which it claims its share of realized added-value

and much more if possible;

- that the socialized economy needs capital as usury to make means of production and land available

for new production to take place and to claim its share of realized added-value as fees and interest at

least commensurate with what it has contributed to the production process but much more if possible;

- that the socialized economy needs landed private property to grant its permission to use Mother 

Earth for which it claims its share as rent;

- that the socialized economy needs labour as chattel to set in motion the means of production for 

which it claims its share of realized added-value according to its value as a commodity on the labour 

market and its contribution to the production process;

- and that the socialized economy needs the capitalist state to guarantee the continuation of the

established property relations and their expansion abroad for which it claims its share of realized

added-value as taxes.

Is it not time Marxist-Leninists and others in the working class movement use modern theory to

guide their thinking and actions on these matters of the economy and replace capital-centred political

economy with human-centred political economy? Why should the working class fall in line behind

the populists in the U.S. and Canada or the European socialists and others of their ilk? The working

class of the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and other countries is not going to accomplish anything

 positive if it refuses to develop its own scientific thinking. Let us leave behind the populist rot from

the twentieth century!

The working class organized of itself and for itself has the social responsibility to negate the

 prevailing unequal social relations including the form in which it finds itself as chattel-labour, and

assume its right and duty to harmonize the existing socialized forces of production with socialized

relations of production and establish control over the direction of the socialized economy and all

affairs of state. Workers in the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and elsewhere are not

exceptions to this modern reality and duty. The revolutionary transformation of the established

relations of production based on private ownership of the socialized means of production will herald

the disappearance of the unequal social relation  labour  and  capital .