Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Trains were shifted from electric to diesel engines. Sometimes, they were simply done away with and replaced by buses and then cars. Together with Big Oil, Big Auto converted electric transit systems to fuel-based bus systems. In one estimate: In 1935, electric train engines outnumbered diesel train engines 7 to 1. "By 1970, diesel train engines outnumbered electric ones 100 to 1. And GM made 60 per cent of the diesel locomotives." The electric rail system in and around Los Angeles was almost erased.
(...) By 2001, that goal was achieved, beyond belief. Some 90 per cent of Americans drove to work by that year. The findings of the 2001 National Household Travel Survey are striking. Only 8 per cent households reported not having a vehicle available for regular use. The survey showed that "that daily travel in the United States totalled about 4 trillion miles, an average of 14,500 miles per person." Trips by transit and by school bus each made up just 2 per cent of daily trips taken in 2001.
(...) An average American family in 2004 spent up to a fifth of its income on transportation. That's against 13 per cent on food. In "automobile dependent neighbourhoods," according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, that could go up to 25 per cent. In bigger cities, the traffic only gets worse, never better. There were over 135 million passenger cars in 2006. Overall, registered vehicles clocked in at more than 250 million. Imagine the centrality of oil, autos and private vehicles to just about everything. This is the very model our own Indian elite seek to transplant. Private automobiles at the cost of public transport. Never mind the latter is a lot cleaner and creates large numbers of jobs. And so we add thousands of such vehicles to the roads each week.
(...) Each car that GM puts out carries a health care cost of around $1600. For Chrysler, that's $1500. But for Toyota, that cost is under $300 per car. Japan has a far superior public health system. In the corporate-media of the United States, this does not lead to calls for a good health system. Or for making health access cheaper. It leads to calls for doing away with the union contracts that guaranteed auto workers health benefits for life. For retirees, the pullback has already begun.
(...) By 2001, that goal was achieved, beyond belief. Some 90 per cent of Americans drove to work by that year. The findings of the 2001 National Household Travel Survey are striking. Only 8 per cent households reported not having a vehicle available for regular use. The survey showed that "that daily travel in the United States totalled about 4 trillion miles, an average of 14,500 miles per person." Trips by transit and by school bus each made up just 2 per cent of daily trips taken in 2001.
(...) An average American family in 2004 spent up to a fifth of its income on transportation. That's against 13 per cent on food. In "automobile dependent neighbourhoods," according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, that could go up to 25 per cent. In bigger cities, the traffic only gets worse, never better. There were over 135 million passenger cars in 2006. Overall, registered vehicles clocked in at more than 250 million. Imagine the centrality of oil, autos and private vehicles to just about everything. This is the very model our own Indian elite seek to transplant. Private automobiles at the cost of public transport. Never mind the latter is a lot cleaner and creates large numbers of jobs. And so we add thousands of such vehicles to the roads each week.
(...) Each car that GM puts out carries a health care cost of around $1600. For Chrysler, that's $1500. But for Toyota, that cost is under $300 per car. Japan has a far superior public health system. In the corporate-media of the United States, this does not lead to calls for a good health system. Or for making health access cheaper. It leads to calls for doing away with the union contracts that guaranteed auto workers health benefits for life. For retirees, the pullback has already begun.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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!
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!
Saturday, November 15, 2008
notes on capital
chapter 15: machinery and large-scale industry
sections 6-10
(566): nominibus mollire licet mala -- "it is proper to lighten evils with words" (ovid)
(568-569): in this critique of the bourgeois economists, marx alludes to an understanding of machinery as emancipatory, providing that its implementation is not overseen by capitalism. this does, though, leave open many questions about how a socialist society implements machinery. is it gradual? if it's gradual how does it remain competitive? how is it not alienating? etc., etc.
(571): the advent of cotton-spinning "promote[d], as if in a hot house, the growing of cotton in the United States, and with it the African Slave Trade." an example, if one was needed, of the way in which capitalism intensified slavery, rather than simply succeeding it. (in 1790, 697,000 slaves in US; in 1861, four million).
(571-572): a bit about the demands of the wool industry and the consequent conversion of arable land into pasture for sheep, which is critical precisely because, as sayre argued, it demonstrates that little is 'natural' (as in, outside of history). or, better put, nature has to be understood historically; in this case, the relation of man to land (in this case, the de-population of rural areas) cannot be understood outside of technological advance and new systems of production. in other words, man, in england and ireland, did not meet natural limits, but limits imposed upon nature by specific histories of 'progress'.
(574): in essence, section 6 responds to those apologists who see in machinery the means by which more and more employment will be made available to laboreres (as, in short, machinery stimulates general economic growth). marx's response is unequivocal: by and large, this stimulation is negligible. there will be further growth, he admits, but this will be insignificant in relation to the general impact of machinery on labor, as well as itself being prey to the later impact of machinery (as in, if machine implementation in one branch of industry stimulates another, we can still expect it to be a matter of time before machinery pervades the latter). he ends, then, with an interesting summary of recent, contemporary growth of the servant class in industrial britain, which has relevance for third world nations today, of course. for if it truly is the case that machinery requires a "larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively," (can we think of the service sector in these terms?) then it is impossible to understand the plight of the current servant classes of the third world without recourse to 'labor-saving' technology. in other words, marx's attentiveness to this question of the relationship between technology and labor absorption should make us critically aware in the present: is it possible to imagine a way to limit technological advance so as to deal with the far more relatively numerous masses in the homes and kitchens of the indigenous bourgeoisie in the third world? how will this be accomplished, while still being competitive to the extent of being sustainable? are these the right questions?
(577): "finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact that everywhere, except in the metallurgical industries, young persons (under 18), women and children form by far the most preponderant element in the factory personnel"--this is the critical 'other side' of the story of the industrial revolution, and neglected, i think, in accounts of women's liberation that give explanatory power to WWII. what did this mean for women's liberation? specifically, why was it the case that this large-scale employment of women did not result, in england, in a consciousness of liberation in the way that it did in america during WW2? of course there's a lot of history that i have yet to learn about both... (namely, what is the story of the english women's movement and its relation to industrial capitalism? what was the role of women in the US industrial revolution (the mills in massachusetts, for example)?)
(578): once more, a martial metaphor to explain industrial competition.
(579): marx, again, was fully aware of the gutting of india's handicraft cotton production, and its conversion into a site for producing raw material (cotton, wool, hemp, jute, indigo).
(579-580): quite standard development of underdevelopment narrative; in other words, quite clearly a dialectical (not linear) narrative of how capitalism advances.
(582): here, marx draws a link between the global extension of capitalism and the frequency of crisis. in other words, there seems to be a link between the scope of the capitalist market--the space over which it has expanded--and the frequency (and clarity) of the crises that afflict it. this, no doubt, is properly theorized in harvey and others. but we can add that it is probably not so much the fact that space is a source of new contradictions (indeed, harvey suggests that expansion into as-yet virgin areas is often the 'fix'), but rather that it is a vehicle for the consolidation of market relations (which clarifies, in a real sense, the dynamics producing crisis).
(588, fn 67): something made clear throughout this chapter is that the fact that the decreasing rate of surplus value must be compensated by absolute increases in capitalist production (by increases in the mass of surplus value) gives capitalism its relentlessly expansive character. innovation must happen, but alongside expansion. both are, simultaneously, survival strategies for individual and system.
(588-589): marx comments here on the way in which specific technical innovations undo certain divisions of labor pioneered in the manufacturing/handicraft era. he uses the example of adam smith, and his example of ten men making sewing-needles. the general importance of this passage, i suggest, is that it raises again the question of how machinery imposes objective requirements on the organization of production, which are of a quite different nature from the divisions of labor that preceded them. in other words, it is wrong to see, as feldstein via smith implied, that the progressively more extensive division of labor is the driver of increased productivity--rather, machinery intervenes in a quite decisive way, disrupting what is a very alluring linear story to reveal contradictions (advances with retreats). (see also 590, where marx writes about how the 'new division of labor' requires exclusively 'cheap labor' (i.e., women and children), quite in contrast to the 'old division of labor' in the handicrafts and even manufacture).
(593): "they become rough, foulmouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that they are women"--i suppose this is excusable, given context and intent.
(596): again, an explicit critique of the linear liberal.
(597): here, in the employment of child labor, we remember the contingency of the definition of childhood. in other words, appraising the dialectical relationship of environment (i.e., the factory) to the underlying biology is crucial to understanding the mendacity of 'capitalist anthropology'. (see also 599, where sociobiology can make little sense of parents pushing their children into brutal forms of employment).
(601): marx's argument, derived from the calculus he establishes for deciding on the efficacy of machinery, is that, in any given industry, there comes a point when increasing productivity through cheating labor, employing women/children, etc., is no longer viable (largely because demand has become so extensive). instead, capitalists turn to the machine. one question, in response, is how does this match on to the argument that the machine itself facilitates the entrance of women/children (he later clarifies some complexity, in that young children are removed but "the new machine-minders are exclusively girls and young women"? but i think that is a historical question, which requires one only to look more carefully at the chronology of their entry, rather than a theoretical conundrum. secondly, there seems to be an underlying dynamic of capital accumulation involved; in other words, you need a certain amount of capital to be able to invest in whole-scale transformation of production; a amount of disposable capital that may not be available in immature industries.
(601): again, looking to the past to better understand the present: "the fearful increase in death from starvation during the last ten years in london runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing"
(604): an important passage on the unsteadiness governing the transition from pre-factory forms to the factory system. specifically, marx here is arguing that the uneven implementation of the factory system in various branches of industry, affects dramatically (in a way that makes more inhumane) the non-factory forms of production that are linked to this technical advance. in other words, much like capitalism seizes on pre-capitalist forms and transforms them, here the factory form of production exacerbates the madness of pre-factory forms. in this way, the ascent of the factory system is accompanied by "a totally changed and disorganized" series of non-factory forms of production, which themselves "overdo all the horrors of the factory system." there is a lingering question about how to judge this transition, as marx seems to be arguing that the transitional forms are "worst" (not unlike slavery under capitalism, i suppose).
(604-605): argument here is fairly straightforward, yet important for legislation to check the excesses of contemporary capitalisms in the third world. in essence, marx is suggesting that the factory acts hastened the mechanization of production, insofar as they prohibited manufacture/domestic industry from the quick fixes of "unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power." to compete, they had to raise productivity by the books. this has interesting consequences, when extrapolated to the case of child labor in the third world; insofar as it is true that more smaller factories/workplaces sustain these practices than larger ones (how true?), one can imagine proper legislation facilitating the concentration of capital in the hands of larger-scale industry (made explicit by marx in a passage on page 607). this dynamic, of course, has its own consequences. (anyway i think all this requires more empirical investigation, before it can be applied to explain today).
(607): a need to discipline the worker--to wean him from his "irregular habits"
(608): this is important, precisely because it prefigures what is done far too infrequently when studying "booms & busts"--namely, looking at crises from the eyes of labor, and assessing their consequences thusly.
(612): the earlier point about bourgeois legality being unable to regulate the internal order of a factory here resurfaces (and this quite aside from questions of autocracy at work). here marx offers an example of the impossibility of regulating the architecture of production: the factory acts could not re-organize the spatial structures of production, lest they "strike at the very roots of the capitalist mode of production," which is really it's freedom to purchase and consume labor-power in whatever way it pleases. put differently, the spatiality of this freedom here becomes important, insofar as it seems "impossible to impose [any] rule on capital" in this regard. in a sense, the contradiction immanent in the dual freedom of labor (the freedom to dispose of him/herself, but also the freeing of him/her from the means of production) here reappears as a contradiction in the legality of productive activity: the bourgeoisie claim the latter in the form of their property rights, yet thereby expose the fallacy of the former, insofar labor is revealed to be thoroughly subordinate to capital's will. "between equal rights, force decides."
(617): there's a dynamism to modern industry, marx is arguing, that is not present in all previous modes of production. whereas those were "essentially conservative," modern industry cannot survive without constantly "transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process." this is of course important to the chronological questions of early industrial britain (progressive de-skilling, for example), aside from being wholly true with respect to the madness of contemporary capitalism. again, dialectics, not linearity. BUT, critically, marx here, in one of those rare moments, hints at what socialist harnessing of large-scale industry would achieve. at the bottom, he writes of how capitalism channels the dynamism required by industry (the "fluidity of functions, the mobility of the worker") into a form that does away with "all fixity and security" for the worker. the challenge for socialism, then, is this: how to organize production in large-scale industry such that the mobility is emancipating, rather than exploitative (there is, of course, the ecological challenge, but that's quite separate). all this is made explicit on page 618, where marx writes directly (well, almost) of the "partially developed individual" being replaced by "the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions [required by large-scale industry] are different modes of activity he takes up in turn."
(619): more of the same attempt to prefigure socialist organization of production--and indeed, a making explicit of the dialectical approach: no necessary connection, in other words, between industry and alienation. in fact, it proves, on this account, a necessary condition for emancipation.
(620): quoting children's employment comission of 1866 (for the sociobiologists): "against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents."
(621): toward a "higher form of the family:" again, an excellent explication of a concrete issue in which we can both lament the loss of all that is "fixed and frozen" (as is critical) without fearing the future (as is necessary).
(621): "since here the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker."
(621): clarifying chronology: factory acts enable general transition to machine-system, simultaneously heightening (in a real sense) the misery of those branches of industry left unregulated (domestic industry, manufacture, handicrafts).
(625-626): of course, in noting the disjuncture between what's enshrined in the letter of the law and what applies, marx (or engels, in this case) registers the classic contradiction of battles over the integrity of laws. indeed, we need to look no further than the UN declaration of human rights.
(635): a key passage, especially as regards the question of the revolutionary potential of the informal working-class. because here marx is tracing the increasing revolutionary capacities of the industrial working-class to the obliteration of spatially isolated small-scale workshops (those "ancient and transitional forms"). as this concentration of workers replaces the prevailing "partially hidden dominion of capital" with an awareness of what exactly workers ought to hold against this world, it "generalizes the direct struggle." it should be clear, though, that none of these conditions exist in the contemporary third world in any significant capacity. in that sense, fanon's command to concentrate on the peasantry needs to be re-issued, today, in the form of a demand to understand and organize the informal sector (the lumpen sectors). what remains to be studied, of course, are the imperfections of this general narrative; are there any ways in which the modern conjuncture opens up as-yet-unforseen possibilities of revolt? or is it really true that davis' pessimism prevails? why not study this, for god's sake?
(637-638): marx's first systematic presentation of the industrialization of agricultural production is lacking, of course, but is interesting in ways that orthodox reproductions don't account for. for example, there is the emphasis on the spatial distribution of laborers as an explanation for the possibility of resistance--indeed, the way he traces the chronology of agglomeration, it might be argued that even the peasantry, if crowded appropriately, could be revolutionary. (yet, on second thought, there's much more to this issue than simply space--it is, of course, to marxism's credit that it has a more robust explanation for what makes the urban working-class revolutionary (i.e,. the utterly inhuman (and painfully clear) hierarchies of the factory floor, and the invariably collective character of the demands that follow)). yet, even still, there remains room for playing with this aspect of the passage. secondly, even more interestingly, marx here introduces the concept of the 'metabolic rift,' emphasized by bellamy-foster. he hints at its future resolution, but all that he writes otherwise clarifies his interest in ecology, and capitalism's unavoidable irrationality in this respect. all this, it scarcely needs to be said, is a critical rejoinder to soviet developmentalism.
chapter 15: machinery and large-scale industry
sections 6-10
(566): nominibus mollire licet mala -- "it is proper to lighten evils with words" (ovid)
(568-569): in this critique of the bourgeois economists, marx alludes to an understanding of machinery as emancipatory, providing that its implementation is not overseen by capitalism. this does, though, leave open many questions about how a socialist society implements machinery. is it gradual? if it's gradual how does it remain competitive? how is it not alienating? etc., etc.
(571): the advent of cotton-spinning "promote[d], as if in a hot house, the growing of cotton in the United States, and with it the African Slave Trade." an example, if one was needed, of the way in which capitalism intensified slavery, rather than simply succeeding it. (in 1790, 697,000 slaves in US; in 1861, four million).
(571-572): a bit about the demands of the wool industry and the consequent conversion of arable land into pasture for sheep, which is critical precisely because, as sayre argued, it demonstrates that little is 'natural' (as in, outside of history). or, better put, nature has to be understood historically; in this case, the relation of man to land (in this case, the de-population of rural areas) cannot be understood outside of technological advance and new systems of production. in other words, man, in england and ireland, did not meet natural limits, but limits imposed upon nature by specific histories of 'progress'.
(574): in essence, section 6 responds to those apologists who see in machinery the means by which more and more employment will be made available to laboreres (as, in short, machinery stimulates general economic growth). marx's response is unequivocal: by and large, this stimulation is negligible. there will be further growth, he admits, but this will be insignificant in relation to the general impact of machinery on labor, as well as itself being prey to the later impact of machinery (as in, if machine implementation in one branch of industry stimulates another, we can still expect it to be a matter of time before machinery pervades the latter). he ends, then, with an interesting summary of recent, contemporary growth of the servant class in industrial britain, which has relevance for third world nations today, of course. for if it truly is the case that machinery requires a "larger and larger part of the working class to be employed unproductively," (can we think of the service sector in these terms?) then it is impossible to understand the plight of the current servant classes of the third world without recourse to 'labor-saving' technology. in other words, marx's attentiveness to this question of the relationship between technology and labor absorption should make us critically aware in the present: is it possible to imagine a way to limit technological advance so as to deal with the far more relatively numerous masses in the homes and kitchens of the indigenous bourgeoisie in the third world? how will this be accomplished, while still being competitive to the extent of being sustainable? are these the right questions?
(577): "finally, we have considered this question entirely apart from the fact that everywhere, except in the metallurgical industries, young persons (under 18), women and children form by far the most preponderant element in the factory personnel"--this is the critical 'other side' of the story of the industrial revolution, and neglected, i think, in accounts of women's liberation that give explanatory power to WWII. what did this mean for women's liberation? specifically, why was it the case that this large-scale employment of women did not result, in england, in a consciousness of liberation in the way that it did in america during WW2? of course there's a lot of history that i have yet to learn about both... (namely, what is the story of the english women's movement and its relation to industrial capitalism? what was the role of women in the US industrial revolution (the mills in massachusetts, for example)?)
(578): once more, a martial metaphor to explain industrial competition.
(579): marx, again, was fully aware of the gutting of india's handicraft cotton production, and its conversion into a site for producing raw material (cotton, wool, hemp, jute, indigo).
(579-580): quite standard development of underdevelopment narrative; in other words, quite clearly a dialectical (not linear) narrative of how capitalism advances.
(582): here, marx draws a link between the global extension of capitalism and the frequency of crisis. in other words, there seems to be a link between the scope of the capitalist market--the space over which it has expanded--and the frequency (and clarity) of the crises that afflict it. this, no doubt, is properly theorized in harvey and others. but we can add that it is probably not so much the fact that space is a source of new contradictions (indeed, harvey suggests that expansion into as-yet virgin areas is often the 'fix'), but rather that it is a vehicle for the consolidation of market relations (which clarifies, in a real sense, the dynamics producing crisis).
(588, fn 67): something made clear throughout this chapter is that the fact that the decreasing rate of surplus value must be compensated by absolute increases in capitalist production (by increases in the mass of surplus value) gives capitalism its relentlessly expansive character. innovation must happen, but alongside expansion. both are, simultaneously, survival strategies for individual and system.
(588-589): marx comments here on the way in which specific technical innovations undo certain divisions of labor pioneered in the manufacturing/handicraft era. he uses the example of adam smith, and his example of ten men making sewing-needles. the general importance of this passage, i suggest, is that it raises again the question of how machinery imposes objective requirements on the organization of production, which are of a quite different nature from the divisions of labor that preceded them. in other words, it is wrong to see, as feldstein via smith implied, that the progressively more extensive division of labor is the driver of increased productivity--rather, machinery intervenes in a quite decisive way, disrupting what is a very alluring linear story to reveal contradictions (advances with retreats). (see also 590, where marx writes about how the 'new division of labor' requires exclusively 'cheap labor' (i.e., women and children), quite in contrast to the 'old division of labor' in the handicrafts and even manufacture).
(593): "they become rough, foulmouthed boys, before Nature has taught them that they are women"--i suppose this is excusable, given context and intent.
(596): again, an explicit critique of the linear liberal.
(597): here, in the employment of child labor, we remember the contingency of the definition of childhood. in other words, appraising the dialectical relationship of environment (i.e., the factory) to the underlying biology is crucial to understanding the mendacity of 'capitalist anthropology'. (see also 599, where sociobiology can make little sense of parents pushing their children into brutal forms of employment).
(601): marx's argument, derived from the calculus he establishes for deciding on the efficacy of machinery, is that, in any given industry, there comes a point when increasing productivity through cheating labor, employing women/children, etc., is no longer viable (largely because demand has become so extensive). instead, capitalists turn to the machine. one question, in response, is how does this match on to the argument that the machine itself facilitates the entrance of women/children (he later clarifies some complexity, in that young children are removed but "the new machine-minders are exclusively girls and young women"? but i think that is a historical question, which requires one only to look more carefully at the chronology of their entry, rather than a theoretical conundrum. secondly, there seems to be an underlying dynamic of capital accumulation involved; in other words, you need a certain amount of capital to be able to invest in whole-scale transformation of production; a amount of disposable capital that may not be available in immature industries.
(601): again, looking to the past to better understand the present: "the fearful increase in death from starvation during the last ten years in london runs parallel with the extension of machine sewing"
(604): an important passage on the unsteadiness governing the transition from pre-factory forms to the factory system. specifically, marx here is arguing that the uneven implementation of the factory system in various branches of industry, affects dramatically (in a way that makes more inhumane) the non-factory forms of production that are linked to this technical advance. in other words, much like capitalism seizes on pre-capitalist forms and transforms them, here the factory form of production exacerbates the madness of pre-factory forms. in this way, the ascent of the factory system is accompanied by "a totally changed and disorganized" series of non-factory forms of production, which themselves "overdo all the horrors of the factory system." there is a lingering question about how to judge this transition, as marx seems to be arguing that the transitional forms are "worst" (not unlike slavery under capitalism, i suppose).
(604-605): argument here is fairly straightforward, yet important for legislation to check the excesses of contemporary capitalisms in the third world. in essence, marx is suggesting that the factory acts hastened the mechanization of production, insofar as they prohibited manufacture/domestic industry from the quick fixes of "unlimited exploitation of cheap labor-power." to compete, they had to raise productivity by the books. this has interesting consequences, when extrapolated to the case of child labor in the third world; insofar as it is true that more smaller factories/workplaces sustain these practices than larger ones (how true?), one can imagine proper legislation facilitating the concentration of capital in the hands of larger-scale industry (made explicit by marx in a passage on page 607). this dynamic, of course, has its own consequences. (anyway i think all this requires more empirical investigation, before it can be applied to explain today).
(607): a need to discipline the worker--to wean him from his "irregular habits"
(608): this is important, precisely because it prefigures what is done far too infrequently when studying "booms & busts"--namely, looking at crises from the eyes of labor, and assessing their consequences thusly.
(612): the earlier point about bourgeois legality being unable to regulate the internal order of a factory here resurfaces (and this quite aside from questions of autocracy at work). here marx offers an example of the impossibility of regulating the architecture of production: the factory acts could not re-organize the spatial structures of production, lest they "strike at the very roots of the capitalist mode of production," which is really it's freedom to purchase and consume labor-power in whatever way it pleases. put differently, the spatiality of this freedom here becomes important, insofar as it seems "impossible to impose [any] rule on capital" in this regard. in a sense, the contradiction immanent in the dual freedom of labor (the freedom to dispose of him/herself, but also the freeing of him/her from the means of production) here reappears as a contradiction in the legality of productive activity: the bourgeoisie claim the latter in the form of their property rights, yet thereby expose the fallacy of the former, insofar labor is revealed to be thoroughly subordinate to capital's will. "between equal rights, force decides."
(617): there's a dynamism to modern industry, marx is arguing, that is not present in all previous modes of production. whereas those were "essentially conservative," modern industry cannot survive without constantly "transforming not only the technical basis of production but also the functions of the worker and the social combinations of the labour process." this is of course important to the chronological questions of early industrial britain (progressive de-skilling, for example), aside from being wholly true with respect to the madness of contemporary capitalism. again, dialectics, not linearity. BUT, critically, marx here, in one of those rare moments, hints at what socialist harnessing of large-scale industry would achieve. at the bottom, he writes of how capitalism channels the dynamism required by industry (the "fluidity of functions, the mobility of the worker") into a form that does away with "all fixity and security" for the worker. the challenge for socialism, then, is this: how to organize production in large-scale industry such that the mobility is emancipating, rather than exploitative (there is, of course, the ecological challenge, but that's quite separate). all this is made explicit on page 618, where marx writes directly (well, almost) of the "partially developed individual" being replaced by "the totally developed individual, for whom the different social functions [required by large-scale industry] are different modes of activity he takes up in turn."
(619): more of the same attempt to prefigure socialist organization of production--and indeed, a making explicit of the dialectical approach: no necessary connection, in other words, between industry and alienation. in fact, it proves, on this account, a necessary condition for emancipation.
(620): quoting children's employment comission of 1866 (for the sociobiologists): "against no persons do the children of both sexes so much require protection as against their parents."
(621): toward a "higher form of the family:" again, an excellent explication of a concrete issue in which we can both lament the loss of all that is "fixed and frozen" (as is critical) without fearing the future (as is necessary).
(621): "since here the worker exists for the process of production, and not the process of production for the worker."
(621): clarifying chronology: factory acts enable general transition to machine-system, simultaneously heightening (in a real sense) the misery of those branches of industry left unregulated (domestic industry, manufacture, handicrafts).
(625-626): of course, in noting the disjuncture between what's enshrined in the letter of the law and what applies, marx (or engels, in this case) registers the classic contradiction of battles over the integrity of laws. indeed, we need to look no further than the UN declaration of human rights.
(635): a key passage, especially as regards the question of the revolutionary potential of the informal working-class. because here marx is tracing the increasing revolutionary capacities of the industrial working-class to the obliteration of spatially isolated small-scale workshops (those "ancient and transitional forms"). as this concentration of workers replaces the prevailing "partially hidden dominion of capital" with an awareness of what exactly workers ought to hold against this world, it "generalizes the direct struggle." it should be clear, though, that none of these conditions exist in the contemporary third world in any significant capacity. in that sense, fanon's command to concentrate on the peasantry needs to be re-issued, today, in the form of a demand to understand and organize the informal sector (the lumpen sectors). what remains to be studied, of course, are the imperfections of this general narrative; are there any ways in which the modern conjuncture opens up as-yet-unforseen possibilities of revolt? or is it really true that davis' pessimism prevails? why not study this, for god's sake?
(637-638): marx's first systematic presentation of the industrialization of agricultural production is lacking, of course, but is interesting in ways that orthodox reproductions don't account for. for example, there is the emphasis on the spatial distribution of laborers as an explanation for the possibility of resistance--indeed, the way he traces the chronology of agglomeration, it might be argued that even the peasantry, if crowded appropriately, could be revolutionary. (yet, on second thought, there's much more to this issue than simply space--it is, of course, to marxism's credit that it has a more robust explanation for what makes the urban working-class revolutionary (i.e,. the utterly inhuman (and painfully clear) hierarchies of the factory floor, and the invariably collective character of the demands that follow)). yet, even still, there remains room for playing with this aspect of the passage. secondly, even more interestingly, marx here introduces the concept of the 'metabolic rift,' emphasized by bellamy-foster. he hints at its future resolution, but all that he writes otherwise clarifies his interest in ecology, and capitalism's unavoidable irrationality in this respect. all this, it scarcely needs to be said, is a critical rejoinder to soviet developmentalism.
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