09/21/2011

EO Wright's fundamental contribution is that class is not 'income', but the conditions under which people labour in order to acquire a certain income.

today, we'll see the way the class structure generates strategies for capitalists, and workers.

fundamental fact is thtat everyone has to sell in order to buy—capitalism generalizes market-dependence (preferred, by Vivek, to the idea that what defines capitalism is 'generalized commodity production. the two go together, but the former is preferable as a succint conceptualization of capitalism).

what distinguishes workers and capitalists is what they have to sell.

w-class sells labour-power

capitalists sell goods produced by labour-power. this, of course, presumes that they have bought labour-power (so they must buy labour-power in order to be able to sell commodities).

M – C – M is a description of what capitalists do, but it's at too high a level of abstraction. because this also describes what merchants do. and that's not what we're after. merchants sell goods that others have produced; but capitalists sell goods whose production they have supervised.

C – M – C is the logic in which the worker is entrapped, he/she is after use-values. his/her main concern is the reproduction of oneself.

(1) so, in order for the capitalist to begin the production process—the capitalist has to 'mobilize' labour. this is not historically trivial, at all; the existence of a large mass of wage-labourers is historically specific to capitalism required the creation of a 'doubly free' body of workers.

when capitalists 'first' incorporated workers into the production process, they were found with the skills of artisans of feudalism—an accommodation of the skill-set with which workers were found. they, first, were working at the behest of capitalists, but not at the command of capitalists.

this, of course, is the formal subsumption of labour, to be contrasted to the real subsumption of labour.

(2) the second thing that capitalists must do is exploit labour – they must produce a surplus. workers will have to work long enough to produce enough stuff, over and above costs, to be worth it for the capitalist. here, of course, we get the struggle over the length of the working-day. the struggle, for the capitalist, is to make the surplus part of the day as relatively large as possible.

there are two tactics

(a) extension of the length of the working-day—increase of surplus-value by absolute means

(b) decreasing the duration of the portion that goes into necessary labour-time, which is effected by productivity improvements in the production of the means of subsistence—increase of surplus-value by relative means. by and large, this latter fact will be an 'unintended consequence' of capitalist competition.

in general, the formal subsumption of labour is co-eval with the production of absolute surplus-value. the real subsumption of labour, on the other hand, is typically co-eval with the production of relative surplus-value.

but the pursuit of absolute surplus-value lives on, of course, in advanced capitalism.

historically, the achievement of the 8-hr working day initiated the 'shift' to the production of relative surplus-value. (1) there's a question, here, of course about collective irrationality being the result of individually rational action. (2) moreover, why isn't competition sufficient, in this stage of capitalism? it's not clear that modern manufacturing begins, really, until the 1870s. economic historians are clear that machine innovation was in quite specific parts in England till much later than is commonly understood.

why do you need to control the labour process if you're producing relative surplus-value? this is Braverman, of course—you need the power to fire workers, and you need authority to shape the labour-process.

(3) the third thing that capital has to do is reproduce the labour supply. but do capitalists, as a class, possess the rationality to do this, if they're pursuing their individual self-interest? there are a lot of radical/left theorists who have argued that sections of capital have been 'more rational' in this regard; Marx's arguments, around absolute surplus-value, suggest differently. if the latter is true, you obviously need a third actor (the State).

the reproduction of workers has to occur in a way, of course, that also reproduces their dependence on capitalists. if you were to give everyone an 'opt-out' that also reproduces them (a guaranteed living-wage), capitalists will oppose it.

here introducing general law of capitalist accumulation.

as capitalism grows, you might well get tighter labour markets. wage is bid upwards.

however, the law of accumulation also brings with it technical change (at a faster rate, when wages are high), which expels workers into the reserve army of labour. this maintains a baseline level of competition amongst workers, for jobs. all this is an unintended consequence—captialists don't necessarily design the existence of a reserve army.

one can capture the balance by thinking about the competing effects of the 'labour-shedding' effects, and the 'labour-incorporating' effects.

(4) the last step of this argument, of course, is to explain why the competitive drive amongst capitalists exists. why is it the case that capitalists have to compete against each other?

what makes capitalists attempt to maximize surplus-value, of course, is the fact that they are pitted against each other. if they don't behave ruthlessly, they go out of business. the structure of capitalism compels capitalists to innovate.

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the 'historical/moral' component of the value of labour-power—there are certain needs which come to be understood as necessary.

productivity defined as stuff produced/variable capital

in that case, productivity increases as 'organic composition rises'--i.e, when technology is labour saving. that's built into the definition

capital productivity vs. labour productivity vs. land productivity?

rationality has two dimensions: formal rationality, which means that individual pursue strategies consistent to given ends; substantive rationality, which means that individuals pursue strategies consistent with their well-being.