From: Jurriaan Bendien (andromeda246@HETNET.NL)
Date: Mon May 10 2004 - 19:24:23 EDT
I wrote previously: "Capital accumulation may occur through: (1) direct appropriation without exchange (dispossession) (2) economic exchange (trade) (3) appropriation of a surplus product in production (exploitation)" I should really add to that another category, namely "taxes, tithes and tributes and levies" by government authorities which own profit-making enterprises, but arguably these could be interpreted in the given case as being (1), (2) or (3) - they could be an impost on property, on income receipts, on persons, or on consumption expenditure. "Economic exchange" could of course also be considered as exploitation, if the exchange is not an exchange of equivalents. In UNSNA, when estimating the value of the new net output (GDP), only those indirect taxes paid which pertain directly to the production of output, and thus are part of the cost-price (the cost-structure) of output are included, but subsidies paid to producer enterprises are subtracted from indirect taxes paid. This way of "netting" implies a kind of "exchange" between the government and producer enterprises, whereby the enterprises pay indirect taxes, and receive producer subsidies (if no subsidies are paid by the government to producer enterprises, then all the relevant indirect taxes paid are considered part of the new value added). However if a government tenders a contract to private enterprise, the value of the contract is not considered a "subsidy" for the purpose of national accounts. In the case of compensation of employees, no such "exchange" applies; only employer contributions in respect of social security levies, which are regarded as part of the cost-price of output, are included, and not government social security payments to employees ( a "social wage" in the form of accident compensation and suchlike) because the latter are considered "transfers" unrelated to the value of new output. So whereas they constitute income for employees, they are not considered to be part of the new value added. (As an aside, paradoxically if aggregate unemployment rises, and more police, social workers, military staff, psychotherapists, counsellors etc. are hired, and the ratio of profits to wages rises due to the adverse bargaining position of employees, then it is possible for GDP to rise at the same time as aggregate employment increases). The topic of taxation, and its potential as a source of capital accumulation, has rarely been explored systematically in the Marxian literature, and the yearly total net tax levy are often just regarded as "a component of annual surplus-value". This opinion must however be qualified, simply because the taxes included in the calculation of gross and net output for national accounting purposes are not equal to total taxes levied, i.e. some taxes are levied (and distributed) outside of the sphere of production. Looking at the 2002 figures, the structure of US federal tax revenue was as approximately as follows: Individual Income Taxes $858.3 billion Corporation Income Taxes $148 billion Miscellaneous other taxes and receipts $79 billion Excise Taxes $67 billion Total US federal tax receipts $1,152.3 billion Total federal receipts (including retirement and social insurance levies) $1,853 billion Thus, the value of total US federal tax receipts in 2002 was very close to the total GDP of the Russian Federation or the total GDP of the Netherlands and Australia combined (in ppp terms - for international GDP comparisons for 2002, see: www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/GDP_PPP.pdf). That is a very large sum of money, which Marxian economists can ignore only at their peril. Jurriaan
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