Global production and the crisis of the tax state

Abstract

This article combines a fiscal sociology framing with value theory in the classical tradition to yield a composite lens through which to examine the relation between Global Value Chains, Global Wealth Chains and the tax state. It has specific regard to the ongoing crisis of tax states globally, as corporate profits go undertaxed. In summary, the argument is as follows. Although capital and the state are both primarily in the business of capturing value from Global Value Chains indirectly (i.e. otherwise than through ownership of means of material production), labour in Global Wealth Chains has a dual role of (i) suppressing the profitability associated with material production in favour of returns from intangibles and (ii) suppressing the corporate tax take. It therefore simultaneously constitutes capital's instrument of value capture, and its instrument of supremacy in its contestation with the state over the proportion in which value capture is shared between the two. Better-paid labour associated with value capture on the part of capital (i.e. better paid Global Wealth Chain labour) is predominantly located in wealthier states, giving those states an alternative source of revenue and consequently giving them a reason for maintaining a global order in which capital has supremacy over them in the contestation over value capture from Global Value Chains. Further, these dynamics are in a feedback loop which serves as a countervailing tendency staving off a structural crisis of capitalism, and that feedback loop is a core driver for today's crisis of tax states.