notes on capital
part five: the production of absolute and relative surplus-value
chapter 16: absolute and relative surplus-value
chapter 17: changes of magnitude in the price of labor-power and in surplus-value
chapter 18: different formulae for the rate of surplus-value
part six: wages
chapter 19: the transformation of the value (and respectively the price) of labor-power into wages
chapter 20: time-wages
chapter 21: piece-wages
chapter 22: national differences in wages
part seven: the process of accumulation of capital
chapter 23: simple reproduction
chapter 24: the transformation of surplus-value into capital
(643): marx is tracking the "hostile antagonism" between mental and manual labor, which he suggests arises as the individual labor becomes replaced by the "collective"--in other words, the many become appendages, the few remain the brains. the question, of course, is simple (quite aside from raymond williams' attempts to complicate the binaries): how does a socialist society manage the collective divison of labor, such that the sovereignty of each individual's mental expression becomes a reality once more?
(647): here he clarifies that the productive base of human society has little to do with "nature," at least in the ahistorical sense (e.g., geoffery sachs, jared diamond). rather, it is again a question of interrogating (from the theses) "sensuous, real-practical life" as it unfolds through history; "the existing productivity of labour...is a gift, not of nature, but of a history embracing thousands of centuries." again, a welcome rebuke to non-radical social science, which sees the barriers of nature where marxists recognize, instead, the relativity (and contingency) of limits. (and then, on 648, he immediately contradicts this with apparent nonsense on 'natural' impediments to advance--on england and india, of course; see though, FN 7 on 666, where marx addresses malthus and attempts to explain 'over-population' by recourse to the eternal laws of nature).
(651): i suppose the above can be reconciled, dialectically, through committing to incorporate 'natural' explanations into the dynamics of marxist explanations. in that sense, the putative invariance of 'nature' is impermissible, forcing a return to history of nature as a source of explanation. marx is doing this here, as he discusses the role of social compulsion in accounting for the division of working lives into necessary and surplus labor (i.e., he's clarifying that this disjuncture has its roots not in nature).
(659): "class struggle" over the spoils of productivity
(659): increasing productivity, marx seems to be suggesting, facilitates greater concentrations of wealth--as the value of labor-power falls, more time can be devoted to the production of surplus-value, all of which makes its way into the hands of capitalists. (imagine their glee at the last 30 years: rising productivity, static wages, cheap imports from china, and easy credit for workers!). there is room, in his analysis, for the place of class struggle in stemming this advance (and it's necessary, given observed patterns in the golden age. yet the fact of this "abyss" is indisputable to observers of the developed economies in the last thirty years.
(664): this attentiveness to time is critical, as it foregrounds an aspect of class conflict long since under-emphasized in analysis of american capitalism: namely, that, as workers are compelled to work longer and longer hours (with less vacation time, more intense work-days), the cost of reproducing them increases (i.e., the value of their labor-power goes up). in this sense, the flattening of the real wage is only part of the story of the assault on living standards in the US. (see also 683)
(667): here, in prefiguring what stands to follow the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, marx notes that not even socialism will limit the working day to necessary labor. the reasoning, i suggest, contains the seeds of the perversion that separates socialism, as aspiration, from socialism as it actually existed. on the one hand, he proceeds from the workers' aspirations to speak of an improvement in his conditions of life--in other words, an extension of what is considered necesary labor. and, on the other hand (and this is, of course, not any less desirable, but nonetheless telling), he speaks of the socialization of appropriation; in other words, surplus labor will exist insofar as some labor will be "necessary for the formation of a social fund." here, of course, we might remember the indignities of bureaucrats gleefully bleeding labor in the name of bold slogans of workers' liberation. again, none of this is intrinsic to the idea of taxation and government; it is simply to make, with hindsight, a point about the need to guard against co-option.
(667): more prefiguring, and no less interesting. capitalism, if defined by the ability of one social stratum to reproduce itself on the basis of another's labor, will only be eclipsed when labor--as in work itself--is universalized. if we accept this, we must confront also the fact of our own parasitism. the life of the university, as it exists under capitalism, could not be a better example of how one social stratum reserves, for itself, all possibilities for "free intellectual and social activity," while another squanders itself to reproduce these kings and queens. the anatomy of the university, in other words, is indistinguishable from the anatomy of the capitalist society which creates and sustains it. this is why, i suggest, battles over the living-wage (and, more ambitiously, visions of re-structuring the university, as workplace) have symbolic importance. until socialism demands that professors clean up their own shit (or, even better, others' shit), and janitors lead classes, we need to remember that we remain far from the world that we hold in our hearts.
(680): capitalism obscuring its mechanism of exploitation in the alleged "equality" of the wage-form; a perversion feudalism could not accomplish, as there surplus labor was "demarcated very clearly both in space and time." this suppression of the awareness of exploitation by folding both the spatial and temporal dimensions of surplus-value production into the factory (and into necessary labor)--the site where has interesting implications, again, for questions of the utility of bourgeois legality (and wars over it).
(680): this anger over bourgeois mystification via the notion of the value of labor (as against value of labor-power) is understandable; think of the behavior of the neoclassicals in living-wage debates, which seeks to naturalize (and de-historicize) a "fair" level of remuneration for labor--an endeavor which obfuscates the fundamental fact of surplus-value creation as a necessary feature of capitalist production. (there is, still, an uneasy question about how this plays out in the service sector--but i need to keep remembering that surplus-value has naught to do with the content of the labor process under consideration, but rather with the anatomy of the production process that mediates it).
(682): there is a latent question about what exactly "science" means for marx, especially as it corresponds to what it has meant for marxists. might we suggest that a critical genealogy of the word could help recover the marx of dynamism and dialectics, as against the vulgarization of his work by the positivists?
(703): this methodical investigation of differences in wages (in addition to the careful attempt to track the development of the "value of labor" in its various wage-forms) gives the lies to attempt to read, from the communist manifesto, a marxist position on "absolute immiseration." it is quite clear that marx was fully aware that this entire question is highly complicated, contingent, and impossible to resolve outside of history.
(709): in this introduction to the process of capital accumulation, two points stand out. first, marx seems to define the act of accumulation as something relentlessly productive--that is, as soon as a capitalist opts to take the fruits of accumulation outside of the cycle of capital circulation, he/she no longer "accumulates." in this sense, accumulation seems tied to the commitment to productively re-invest surplus. second, the fragmentation of the fruits of accumulation (into profit, interest, rent, etc.)--all this offers, perhaps, a good way to theorize the parasitic origins of financial capital. of course, there is more to the story, in the sense that finance, especially when disciplined, opens the circulation of capital, rather than just emerging as a consequence (in that sense, the temporality is reversed, perhaps). even still, at the most fundamental level, the fact of dependence on the real economy can hardly be disputed--ultimately, the accumulation of capital requires the production process.
(712): marx here, in his "accounting," lays the foundation for worker-control, insofar as it clarifies the contradiction immanent in the asymmetries of capitalist production--the worker is at once free from the capitalist (in that he is responsible for his own reproduction), and at once subordinate (in the morphologies of the factory floor). this surely qualifies as one of these "legendary" contradictions, whose resolution presents itself in the dreams of laborers everywhere: collective ownership of the means of production.
(713): here, i think, there's room to explore (or, rather, to clarify) marx's admittedly complicated thoughts on the relationship between material relationships and the ideal forms that interpret the former. the argument is simple: in arguing that the "transaction is veiled by the commodity-form of the product and the money-form of the commmodity," he's quite clearly claiming that certain concepts serve to legitimize actually-existing social relations (in this case, the commodity-form, which prioritizes the process of selling over and above production, and the money-form, which empowers those seeking to transform M into C into M', the capitalist, at the expense of those who earn money only in order to consume). in sum, the heavenly, bourgeois mist that coheres around dirty earthy realities obfuscates the nature of capitalist exploitation. to extend his argument, we might add that his earlier stress on the incessant character of this process is critical, as it speaks to what barbara fields highlights, namely the importance of living and re-living these facts-of-life to the formation of ideal apparatuses that rationalize them. taken even further, against the dogmatists, i think we can recover an almost gramscian notion of hegemony in this presentation of "legitimation"--it is the fact that the laborer receives a wage, week-in, week-out (with which he purchases a "basket of goods"), that cements, ideally, his subjugation to capital, which appears here as his provider. (the abiding question, still, is whether emancipation from this subjugation is primarily ideal--as in, does the worker learn "marxist economic theory" in order to be free--or, primarily material--as in, it requires the overthrow of said material relationships). as with most questions, i think the anticipated answer is likely too simplistic. fields' argument lends itself to a more pessimistic reading (as in one needs to reject the source at which these ideas are reproduced), whereas the dogmatists and parties, of course, invest their faith in the notion of emancipation through "scientific education." we need not review the absurdities of the latter, though we might want to interrogate the limitations of the latter (particularly, in the diagnosis of "hegemony"--is anything so clean, after all? at the very least, we need to re-introduce fanon's notion of hegemony-never-consolidated)
(716): a mutual dependence between capitalist and wage-laborer (insofar as the worker constantly produces "objective wealth," in the form of capital; and insofar as the capitalist "just as constantly produces labour-power...produces the worker as a wage-laborer") obscures the sovereignty of labor (insofar as labor-power is the incessant (though not necessarily original) source of capital's valorization), even while the actual dynamics are inverted in order to crown the capitalist (insofar as the capitalist buys labor-power, and thus reserves the right to dispose of it as he will).
(718): this claim, that the individual consumption of the worker forms an indispensable part of the process of production, is critical, for at least two reasons: (1) it further highlights the myriad ways in which, even in those spheres which he/she might be considered "free" and "autonomous," capital seeps into the non-working life of the worker. in the fact that this "maintenance and reproduction of the working-class remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital," we again see the dialectics of mutual dependence and subjugation. (2) it is within this capillary form of domination, i think, that one must situate analysis of the more overt forms of capital's intrusions (advertising, the company store, credit cards, etc.).
(718-719): implicit in marx's unveiling of the notions of "productive" and "unproductive" consumption is the same claim about the "irrational character of capitalist rationality"--namely, the notion that productivity, efficiency, output, etc., all are measured in relation to the process of valorization. once we break with these limited metrics, however, the massive irrationalities become clearer. to put it more succinctly, the rhetoric of rationality is tied to class. none of this is very distinct from what weber, foucault, or the frankfurt schoool wanted to emphasize--the notion that a prodigiously productive, efficient apparatus was deployed to deplorable, irrational ends.
(720-721): the british cotton industry, calling for a bailout in the aftermath of the blockade of the american south--some things never change! (here, more importantly, marx is relating capital's awareness of its (and society's) dependence on labor.
(722): the desire to restrict freedom of movement of labor reveals, again, the sinister asymmetry at the heart of the dual freedom of the wage-laborer: 'free' to dispose of himself as he will (i.e., not work and starve), but simultaneously 'free' to be disposed of as the capitalist would like. here, as always, "between equal rights, force [is deciding]."
(725-726): i take this opportunity to stress what is argued throughout these sections on accumulation, namely that capital accumulation proceeds only insofar as capital is incessantly deployed and re-deployed--insofar as the cycle of capital's circulation is unbroken. in that sense, latin american elites buying second homes in the US represent the failure of that indigenous bourgeoisie to fulfill its historical vocation. in other words, the unproductive consumption of the capitalist class, though significant, in a historical sense, when assessing third world development, is not marx's concern. again, he takes bourgeois intellectual's at their word when critiquing their "creation." (to review: failed capital accumulation, in marx's terms, is described as "simple reproduction"). (see also 738-739).
(727): in tracing how simple reproduction becomes "a spiral," marx makes room for, within his analysis, the fact of the rising standard of living of the working-class. as he has established, capitalist's are invariably critically dependent on the existence of a laboring population--indeed, the "autonomous" reproduction of wage-labor is part of the cycle of capital's circulation. in this sense, quite apart from that theory of crisis which identifies the contradiction latent in capital's dual relationship to labor (as its workers, but also as its consumers), marx is suggesting that capital cannot avoid the imperative to provide an increasingly larger absolute social product to workers in order that they may reproduce themselves in ever greater numbers. note, he has dwelt carefully on the imperfections, and further contradictions in this process--how this is unsteady, unwilling, and often untrue. and that holistic analysis is really the lesson of this book.
(729-730): an excellent passage, requiring little explication: bourgeois legality mystifies the content of the capitalist's appropriation by presenting in the form of the equal exchange. in other words, the legal framework that regulates exchange enshrines a principle utterly hostile to the equality it purports--namely, the parasitism of capital and the subjugation of labor that ensues. (an interesting additional issue, which is evident from marx's presentation, is the fleeting legality of this relationship. rather than understanding bourgeois legality as incomplete, ideally, in other words, he seems to be presenting it as partial because it is temporary. when we confine ourselves to the act of exchange (the interaction between capital as buyer and wage-laborer as seller), all is well. it is when we move beyond this that we must also move beyond the mist of bourgeois social science).
(731): something also needs to be said about the curious character of labour-power as commodity. as marx notes, while the wage-laborer alienates it in his contract with the capitalist, this alienation is temporary (after the act of exchange, he's free(/condemned) to do this again). in a sense, the entire tragedy of the proletarian resides in his inability to detach himself from what he sells--he must follow his commodity to work, as that commodity is his body, his-self. with this in mind, one can even begin to argue that drugs, religion, whatever else, represent an alienation in response to this fundamental alienation--as he is alienated in following his body to work (ah, the dualists return!), he responds by leaving the factory in order to find god, football, or everything in between. "apathy," then, is only a feature of this underlying injustice.
(733): a need to think this through--"to the extent that commodity production, in accordance with its own immanent laws, undergoes a further development into capitalist production, the property laws of commodity production must undergo a dialectical inversion so that they become laws of capitalist appropriation."
(740-741): here, marx is telling a story about the capitalist class becoming progressively less "capitalist" (as vocation), as capitalism advances, insofar as they "accumulate" less and "splurge" more. this chronology of increasnig 'lax-ness', i think, seems resoundingly true--though what is needed to make the narrative more robust is specifics rooted in history (note, marx also complicates this significantly--speaking, for example, of the occasional necessity of capital representing itself through luxury). for example, in the US the recent story is well-known, hinging on the neoliberal revolution (de-industrialization, financialization, and macro- and micro-economic indebtedness).
(742): in this brief allusion to the notion that the capitalist, too, is merely a 'machine' means to the end of valorization, there's room to assert, with marcuse and the others, the more total undesirability of modern industrial society. indeed, it is precisely this process of means incessantly and permanently becoming ends-in-themselves that those thinkers foreground as the madness of modernity. of course, no one needs the zerzanite reaction.
(747): "in the chapters on the production of surplus-value we constantly assumed that wages were at least equal to the value of labor-power. but the forcible reduction of the wage of labor beneath its value plays too important a role in the practical movement of affairs for us not to stay with this phenomenon for a moment."
(748): again, in this essay on the english worker of the 18th century lamenting the cheapness of french labor, we confront again the morphological timelessness of the capitalist economy.
(756): here, the fetishism of the commodity re-appears in the fetishism of capital: "all the powers of labor project themselves as powers of capital, just as the value-forms of the commodity do as forms of money." to review, the productive forces of labor--both as it preserves the value of dead labor, and also adds new value to the product--appear as the features of capital's ability to self-valorize. in the case of money, though i need to clarify the argument, money (as universal equivalent) expresses individual properties of specific commodities as general qualities of itself (appropriating, in a sense, their functions to itself).
(758-759, fn 51): marx on bentham, that "soberly pedantic and heavy-footed oracle..."--priceless!
