Hey gang,
I finished Volume One today, so it will now be possible for me to go back and "blog out" the remaining 700 pages. I should say, reading Capital was one of the most exhilarating intellectual tasks I have ever undertaken, and the 7 months of reading were--and I say this without embarrassment--transformative. I recommend the effort, without reserve, to anyone. Although no book could have a higher reputation, I have been endlessly impressed and persuaded while reading--if the gist and general aim are well known to everyone, the mass of evidence and clarity of argument Marx lends his argument are invaluable. Unlike, say, reading Nietzsche, an experience of finding an entirely-new person behind the familiar characterizations, reading Marx indeed finds the Marx we "already know"--his concerns are those we suspected, his insights are still active, etc.--but with the difference that this "set of concerns" and array of "Marxist" insights no longer seem like a knowledge to be filed under the heading, Philosophers; German; 19th Century; Marx & Engels, but insist on being taken up as our own, and still as deeply *his*. What can I say? I loved it.
"He is a necessary and integral part of our human spirit."- Gramsci, Our Marx
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Part 3: Chapter 9
The "rate of surplus value" is "an exact expression of the degree of exploitation of labor-power by capital, or of the worker by the capitalist."
What anyone will remember about this chapter is the seemingly-arbitrary nature of the time "necessary" to produce the worker's means of subsistence, "if instead of working for the capitalist, he worked independent on his own account." For Marx, without advancing much evidence, this is usually assumed to be ~ six hours. (This, we must of course add, is nationally/historically contingent, but we wonder if it is so contingent in these examples as to be random.) I think we will get far by asking, "How do we know that the worker is not being paid fairly?"
If we flip back to chapter 7, we see that machinery and materials, sitting by themselves, or being worked on, do not create value, but can merely have their own values change shape. And, if the commodity of labor-power were treated only as the time necessary to reproduce itself (i.e. the way that other commodities operate as exchange-values), all values would be quantitatively equal when C was sold and became M again. The first and second M would be the same; capital would not accumulate but would be merely tautological.
This begs the question of all of Marx's previous definitions, however. Whence six hours, then? On one hand, we have to take this on the faith of its continuity with the already-demonstrated part of the system, and on the other, every demonstrated motive of capital as Marx later shows it. And, indeed, as "variable" capital, Marx concedes that there should be nothing fixed about this number, which comes under examination later and at great length. *That* there must be such a number (of hours of strictly "necessary" labor) we must concede, but its exact number is only (here) exemplary or (elsewhere) scrutinized.
Marx's overarching point here is that exploitation must be measured, not absolutely (as in the naive belief that, because overhead is cleared only in the "last hour" of work, that adding every additional hour would double, triple profit), but relatively, in proportion to necessary labor (a variable quantity).
What anyone will remember about this chapter is the seemingly-arbitrary nature of the time "necessary" to produce the worker's means of subsistence, "if instead of working for the capitalist, he worked independent on his own account." For Marx, without advancing much evidence, this is usually assumed to be ~ six hours. (This, we must of course add, is nationally/historically contingent, but we wonder if it is so contingent in these examples as to be random.) I think we will get far by asking, "How do we know that the worker is not being paid fairly?"
If we flip back to chapter 7, we see that machinery and materials, sitting by themselves, or being worked on, do not create value, but can merely have their own values change shape. And, if the commodity of labor-power were treated only as the time necessary to reproduce itself (i.e. the way that other commodities operate as exchange-values), all values would be quantitatively equal when C was sold and became M again. The first and second M would be the same; capital would not accumulate but would be merely tautological.
This begs the question of all of Marx's previous definitions, however. Whence six hours, then? On one hand, we have to take this on the faith of its continuity with the already-demonstrated part of the system, and on the other, every demonstrated motive of capital as Marx later shows it. And, indeed, as "variable" capital, Marx concedes that there should be nothing fixed about this number, which comes under examination later and at great length. *That* there must be such a number (of hours of strictly "necessary" labor) we must concede, but its exact number is only (here) exemplary or (elsewhere) scrutinized.
Marx's overarching point here is that exploitation must be measured, not absolutely (as in the naive belief that, because overhead is cleared only in the "last hour" of work, that adding every additional hour would double, triple profit), but relatively, in proportion to necessary labor (a variable quantity).
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