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).
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Part 3: Chapter 8
"Constant capital" is the means of productions, the part of capital which maintains its quantity of value throughout the process of production. Now, crucially this value changes *form* in production, i.e. cotton becomes yarn, or a spindle "transfers" all of its use-value into yarn. Marx calls this transformation "a metempsychosis." Value "deserts the consumed body to occupy the newly create one. But this transmigration takes place, as it were, behind the back of the actual labor in progress."
So much of Capital is about machinery. Sometimes I imagine that the book could have been titled The Conditions of the Working Class in England, but in these chapters on constant capital, I wonder why it wasn't titled The Question Concerning Technology. It is important for us here to distinguish between "past labor" and "the means of production"—i.e. value and its embodiment. What is transferred in production is value, i.e. the value of past labor expressed in embodied-time: in use-values which we call means of production. Machinery contains the labor which made it, and over the course of its mechanical exhaustion, transfers 1/Xth of that labor into the product (having a life of X repetitions). But the raw materials also contain past labor (cotton does not fall out of the sky), and the form of these materials is "destroyed" while their value "reappears" in the new product.
We cannot be more specific than Marx here, so a quote will suffice: "As regards the means of production, what is really consumed is their use-value, and the consumption of this use-value by labor results in the product. There is in fact no consumption of their value and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that it is re-produced. It is rather preserved." What is produced in the product "is a new use-value in which the old exchange-value re-appears." If we are astonished to see exchange-value, our old friend, reappearing here, it shows how easily capital stops looking like capital.
The accumulation of capital, as we recall, follows the formula M-C-M. In other words, exchange-value, use-value, exchange-value. The production of the commodity to be sold consumes the use-value of the means of production purchased by the capitalist (constant capital)—the exchange value which reappears as money when the commodity is sold.
The whole point of this chapter is not only to draw the titular distinction (constant and variable capital), but also to defeat the perception that machinery "creates" value: "Once engaged in this process [of production], the machine cannot transfer more value than it possesses independently of the process."
So much of Capital is about machinery. Sometimes I imagine that the book could have been titled The Conditions of the Working Class in England, but in these chapters on constant capital, I wonder why it wasn't titled The Question Concerning Technology. It is important for us here to distinguish between "past labor" and "the means of production"—i.e. value and its embodiment. What is transferred in production is value, i.e. the value of past labor expressed in embodied-time: in use-values which we call means of production. Machinery contains the labor which made it, and over the course of its mechanical exhaustion, transfers 1/Xth of that labor into the product (having a life of X repetitions). But the raw materials also contain past labor (cotton does not fall out of the sky), and the form of these materials is "destroyed" while their value "reappears" in the new product.
We cannot be more specific than Marx here, so a quote will suffice: "As regards the means of production, what is really consumed is their use-value, and the consumption of this use-value by labor results in the product. There is in fact no consumption of their value and it would therefore be inaccurate to say that it is re-produced. It is rather preserved." What is produced in the product "is a new use-value in which the old exchange-value re-appears." If we are astonished to see exchange-value, our old friend, reappearing here, it shows how easily capital stops looking like capital.
The accumulation of capital, as we recall, follows the formula M-C-M. In other words, exchange-value, use-value, exchange-value. The production of the commodity to be sold consumes the use-value of the means of production purchased by the capitalist (constant capital)—the exchange value which reappears as money when the commodity is sold.
The whole point of this chapter is not only to draw the titular distinction (constant and variable capital), but also to defeat the perception that machinery "creates" value: "Once engaged in this process [of production], the machine cannot transfer more value than it possesses independently of the process."
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Part 3: Chapter 7
Perhaps Hegel's most marked influence on Marx is stylistic—not in terms of the "difficulty" of their prose, but in the disingenuousness required by the dialectical method. Flipping back in Capital hundreds of pages, the reader comes across many statements which give him pause. A given sentence about the labor process is always from the viewpoint available at that point in our consciousness of it, which is inevitably simplified. For instance, "In a successful product, the role played by past labor in mediating its useful properties has been extinguished" (289). Much later, however, we are to hear that "past labor always disguises itself as capital" (757)! If anyone needs a good example of dialectical thought, here is a perfect example, spread out over half of the book. What appears to be extinguished—objectified in the final product, is not only in fact preserved (as assets), but is also raised up: as the means of production, past labor eventually dominates living labor, "as the rule of the past, dead labor over the living" (988).
Let us say we wanted to embark upon a hackneyed reading-together of the commodity fetish section in Marx and the lordship-bondage section in Hegel's Phenomenology. The only reasonable thing to pursue here would not be analogous details, or parallelism in dialectical language, but the place of these sections in relation to the entire argument (where there is, in fact, a great deal to say).
This is all to say, blogging "as-we-go" in Marx is rather self-defeating. Everything we learn is later exposed to revision; though we were never "mistaken," we don't get to hold fast to the material and definitions we memorized in the introductory chapters.
So, in this chapter, the means of production (objectified "past labor") must be seized upon by living labor, be "awakened from the dead." Later, this will be reversed—the machine (esp. its technological development) will seize upon the laborer and alter him as it sees fit. But at this early stage, Marx presents… what shall we call it? Here we are discussing "the simple elements of the labor process"—thus, as distinguished from animal labor, or from whittling a stick; and foremost as labor embodies value and becomes a use-value.
In the selling of the worker's labor-power, however, the particular use-value produced becomes irrelevant—more important is the product's containing surplus-value. "Use value is certainly not la chose qu'on aime pour lui-même in the production of commodities"… "Value is independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne." As always (I suggest) we must read this talk about commodities with a double-vision, with one eye towards shoes, Bibles, belts, and with the other eye directed towards the sell of labor-power as a commodity. So, Marx discusses the (essential) value embodied in a (contingent) use-value above, but then turns this logic around upon the worker who sells his labor-power and the capitalist who purchases it: "the use-value of labor-power, in other words labor, belongs as little to its seller as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who sold it." With full irony, then, we learn that the worker's having-sold his labor for twice the time necessary to reproduce it is, "a piece of good luck for the buyer!"
It is precisely this "good luck," the worker's having to sell an entire day of his time for the exchange-value necessary to reproduce himself (i.e. live another 24 hours), which creates surplus value. This "trick" "both takes place and does not take place in the sphere of circulation. It takes place through the mediation of circulation because it is conditioned by the purchase of the labor-power in the market; it does not take place in circulation because what happens there is only an introduction to the valorization process, which is entirely confined to the sphere of production. And so 'everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.'"
The separation of these two spheres here functions as an alibi. We should not be surprised if we later see that this phenomenon is anything but a trick, a piece of luck, or if the laws of exchange (here unviolated) turn out to have been a stacked deck.
Let us say we wanted to embark upon a hackneyed reading-together of the commodity fetish section in Marx and the lordship-bondage section in Hegel's Phenomenology. The only reasonable thing to pursue here would not be analogous details, or parallelism in dialectical language, but the place of these sections in relation to the entire argument (where there is, in fact, a great deal to say).
This is all to say, blogging "as-we-go" in Marx is rather self-defeating. Everything we learn is later exposed to revision; though we were never "mistaken," we don't get to hold fast to the material and definitions we memorized in the introductory chapters.
So, in this chapter, the means of production (objectified "past labor") must be seized upon by living labor, be "awakened from the dead." Later, this will be reversed—the machine (esp. its technological development) will seize upon the laborer and alter him as it sees fit. But at this early stage, Marx presents… what shall we call it? Here we are discussing "the simple elements of the labor process"—thus, as distinguished from animal labor, or from whittling a stick; and foremost as labor embodies value and becomes a use-value.
In the selling of the worker's labor-power, however, the particular use-value produced becomes irrelevant—more important is the product's containing surplus-value. "Use value is certainly not la chose qu'on aime pour lui-même in the production of commodities"… "Value is independent of the particular use-value by which it is borne." As always (I suggest) we must read this talk about commodities with a double-vision, with one eye towards shoes, Bibles, belts, and with the other eye directed towards the sell of labor-power as a commodity. So, Marx discusses the (essential) value embodied in a (contingent) use-value above, but then turns this logic around upon the worker who sells his labor-power and the capitalist who purchases it: "the use-value of labor-power, in other words labor, belongs as little to its seller as the use-value of oil after it has been sold belongs to the dealer who sold it." With full irony, then, we learn that the worker's having-sold his labor for twice the time necessary to reproduce it is, "a piece of good luck for the buyer!"
It is precisely this "good luck," the worker's having to sell an entire day of his time for the exchange-value necessary to reproduce himself (i.e. live another 24 hours), which creates surplus value. This "trick" "both takes place and does not take place in the sphere of circulation. It takes place through the mediation of circulation because it is conditioned by the purchase of the labor-power in the market; it does not take place in circulation because what happens there is only an introduction to the valorization process, which is entirely confined to the sphere of production. And so 'everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.'"
The separation of these two spheres here functions as an alibi. We should not be surprised if we later see that this phenomenon is anything but a trick, a piece of luck, or if the laws of exchange (here unviolated) turn out to have been a stacked deck.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Delay in Posting
I apologize for the only vaguely terminable gaps in my posting; this semester is front-loaded pretty badly but I should be able to post in a month or so. I will continue to read!
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Part 2: Chapters 5 and 6
Marx concludes Part 2 by reflecting on the change "in the physiognomy of our dramatis personae" as we leave the "sphere of simple circulation" for that of production.
He who was previously the money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his worker. The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back, like someone who has brought his own hide to market and now has nothing else to expect but--a tanning.
What has happened in these chapters is that the buyer-seller relationship stops being one of equals. In the exchange of bibles, coats, linen, corn, etc., we were in "a very Eden of the innate rights of man." In the exchange of commodities, one serves oneself and one's advantage, and only concludes the best deal to mutual advantage. However, no money can be made this way. "Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, creates no value." This is the thesis of chapter 5.
Why does Marx call the worker "the possessor of labour-power"? [In German, Arbeitskraft or its sister concept, "capacity for labour", Arbeitsvermögen.] Labour-power is a commodity. Like other commodities, its value is the amount of socially-average labor necessary to have made it and to reproduce it. Thus, its value "is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner." In every thought we have about labour-power, we should be able to check it against our knowledge of commodities from Part 1. This will help us when we get to the question of wages.
For example, there is a certain average labor time necessary to make a coat. Just so, "in a given country at a given period, the average amount of the means of subsistence for the worker is a known datum." Feigning the cold detachment of the capitalist, Marx says that this subsistence must take into account "the worker's replacements, i.e. his children," so that these commodity owners "may perpetuate their presence on the market."
To keep our terms straight, the "use-value" of "labour-power" is... labour, the exercise of the worker's labour-power. This use-value is "consumed" by the capitalist. And here is the crucial point. Labour-power is "a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore itself an objectification of labour, hence a creation of value."
To return to where we began this post, we are leaving the sphere of circulation, because capital cannot arise in that sphere. We are following "the owner of money and the owner of labour-power" "into the hidden abode of production." To restate: in commodity-circulation, there are owners of corn and owners of bibles, looking to convert one into the other (with the intermediary stage of money). But as we enter production, the commodities are different and their owners have new names: the owner of money is the capitalist, and the owner of labour-power is the worker.
He who was previously the money-owner now strides out in front as a capitalist; the possessor of labour-power follows as his worker. The one smirks self-importantly and is intent on business; the other is timid and holds back, like someone who has brought his own hide to market and now has nothing else to expect but--a tanning.
What has happened in these chapters is that the buyer-seller relationship stops being one of equals. In the exchange of bibles, coats, linen, corn, etc., we were in "a very Eden of the innate rights of man." In the exchange of commodities, one serves oneself and one's advantage, and only concludes the best deal to mutual advantage. However, no money can be made this way. "Circulation, or the exchange of commodities, creates no value." This is the thesis of chapter 5.
Why does Marx call the worker "the possessor of labour-power"? [In German, Arbeitskraft or its sister concept, "capacity for labour", Arbeitsvermögen.] Labour-power is a commodity. Like other commodities, its value is the amount of socially-average labor necessary to have made it and to reproduce it. Thus, its value "is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of its owner." In every thought we have about labour-power, we should be able to check it against our knowledge of commodities from Part 1. This will help us when we get to the question of wages.
For example, there is a certain average labor time necessary to make a coat. Just so, "in a given country at a given period, the average amount of the means of subsistence for the worker is a known datum." Feigning the cold detachment of the capitalist, Marx says that this subsistence must take into account "the worker's replacements, i.e. his children," so that these commodity owners "may perpetuate their presence on the market."
To keep our terms straight, the "use-value" of "labour-power" is... labour, the exercise of the worker's labour-power. This use-value is "consumed" by the capitalist. And here is the crucial point. Labour-power is "a commodity whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore itself an objectification of labour, hence a creation of value."
To return to where we began this post, we are leaving the sphere of circulation, because capital cannot arise in that sphere. We are following "the owner of money and the owner of labour-power" "into the hidden abode of production." To restate: in commodity-circulation, there are owners of corn and owners of bibles, looking to convert one into the other (with the intermediary stage of money). But as we enter production, the commodities are different and their owners have new names: the owner of money is the capitalist, and the owner of labour-power is the worker.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Part 2: Chapter 4
Well, this now appears as the "project," in every sense, that it ought to be. My real apologies (to whom, I don't know) for the halting nature of this reading. Responding to Seth's last post, which was responding to my last post, I think we can suggest something a bit further about what this work is after--now that capital has been raised as a topic. Is it wrong to assume that a book called "Capital" will really be about capital? Wrong, or naive?
If the argument of the first chapters appeared as a "progression" in which more complicated forms of exchange "arise"--starting with barter and ending with paper currency--"The General Formula for Capital" is exactly that: general, formulaic. How can there be a narrative with a logical formula--indeed, with a tautology? The formula is M-C-M, but "the result, in which the whole process vanishes, is the exchange of money for money, M-M."
As I was arguing before, following the structuralists, the "logical order" of presentation and the "historical development" do not correspond. Here we may say that I was only following Marx, who refers to "the appearance of capital" in two senses. Logically, money, "the ultimate product of the circulation of commodities, is the first form of appearance of capital." And historically, the first "form of appearance" of capital is when it "confronts landed property in the form of money; in the form of monetary wealth, merchant' capital and usurers' capital." But this historical development is disregarded:
However, we do not need to look back at the history of capital's origins in order to recognize that money is its first form of appearance. Every day the same story is played out before our eyes.
Here the two registers are disjoined. What is "historical" is not past, but is happening "every day." Capital first appeared as money in the 16th century, but it also will first appear as money in every case: today and tomorrow.
* * *
The tautology M-M, however, has much more "going on" than just "money which begets money" (the Mercantilist description).
* M-M is not self-contained, but must be constantly renewed. The surplus value cannot be withdrawn from circulation, but has to be put back: "the final result of each separate cycle... forms of itself the starting point for a new cycle."
* Thus M-->C-->M is an endless movement. Rather than a tautology, one gets... well, we shall see how we want to describe this. An ascending line? A Möbius strip? I don't know that I can get into the "topology" of this infinite movement, but it is at the least not a ping-pong match.
* Valorization, Marx says, is "self-valorization," of which money is only the "independent form by means of which its identity (as value) may be asserted." In valorization, unlike in hoarding, "there is no antagonism" between money and commodity--capital has to take the form of a commodity in order to "throw off surplus-value from itself." But the subject of this process is value. It is to value that the "occult ability" of self-valorization belongs.
* Marx likens this occult ability to another famous tautology: the identity of God the Father and God the Son. Although they are differentiated and take disguised forms and can be "thrown off" from one another, their difference can also "vanish again, and both become one." [We recall the strange scene in Paradise Lost where God and Jesus have a conversation in Heaven, before Man has even been created.]
* Not only the commodity, but the capitalist himself is the "bearer" of this movement of value. I should ask Seth here if the commodity (or money) is referred to by this same word, Träger. [Seth?] And perhaps later on we will pull out the Hegelianisms or their inversions here.
I've read a bit further than this, but I wanted to get the ball rolling again. I also read Derrida's Specters of Marx in the interim, so perhaps I will have something to say about that, too.
If the argument of the first chapters appeared as a "progression" in which more complicated forms of exchange "arise"--starting with barter and ending with paper currency--"The General Formula for Capital" is exactly that: general, formulaic. How can there be a narrative with a logical formula--indeed, with a tautology? The formula is M-C-M, but "the result, in which the whole process vanishes, is the exchange of money for money, M-M."
As I was arguing before, following the structuralists, the "logical order" of presentation and the "historical development" do not correspond. Here we may say that I was only following Marx, who refers to "the appearance of capital" in two senses. Logically, money, "the ultimate product of the circulation of commodities, is the first form of appearance of capital." And historically, the first "form of appearance" of capital is when it "confronts landed property in the form of money; in the form of monetary wealth, merchant' capital and usurers' capital." But this historical development is disregarded:
However, we do not need to look back at the history of capital's origins in order to recognize that money is its first form of appearance. Every day the same story is played out before our eyes.
Here the two registers are disjoined. What is "historical" is not past, but is happening "every day." Capital first appeared as money in the 16th century, but it also will first appear as money in every case: today and tomorrow.
* * *
The tautology M-M, however, has much more "going on" than just "money which begets money" (the Mercantilist description).
* M-M is not self-contained, but must be constantly renewed. The surplus value cannot be withdrawn from circulation, but has to be put back: "the final result of each separate cycle... forms of itself the starting point for a new cycle."
* Thus M-->C-->M is an endless movement. Rather than a tautology, one gets... well, we shall see how we want to describe this. An ascending line? A Möbius strip? I don't know that I can get into the "topology" of this infinite movement, but it is at the least not a ping-pong match.
* Valorization, Marx says, is "self-valorization," of which money is only the "independent form by means of which its identity (as value) may be asserted." In valorization, unlike in hoarding, "there is no antagonism" between money and commodity--capital has to take the form of a commodity in order to "throw off surplus-value from itself." But the subject of this process is value. It is to value that the "occult ability" of self-valorization belongs.
* Marx likens this occult ability to another famous tautology: the identity of God the Father and God the Son. Although they are differentiated and take disguised forms and can be "thrown off" from one another, their difference can also "vanish again, and both become one." [We recall the strange scene in Paradise Lost where God and Jesus have a conversation in Heaven, before Man has even been created.]
* Not only the commodity, but the capitalist himself is the "bearer" of this movement of value. I should ask Seth here if the commodity (or money) is referred to by this same word, Träger. [Seth?] And perhaps later on we will pull out the Hegelianisms or their inversions here.
I've read a bit further than this, but I wanted to get the ball rolling again. I also read Derrida's Specters of Marx in the interim, so perhaps I will have something to say about that, too.
Friday, November 16, 2007
The Story // The Argument
I think Ben's last longer post is really intriguing, especially since I've been reading the Eighteenth Brumaire on the side. Some quick questions before a longer post this weekend.
* If he's telling a story, is Marx doing "serious" history, developing a typological narrative of modern exchange, which [as I think you're suggesting, Ben] lays waste to its precursors as it moves forward?
* Or is he proceeding from first principles--like Hobbes in Leviathan--and writing an implicit polemic [raising and devastating arguments without stooping to the naming of names], while mitigating his broadside by allowing it to take the structure of a story?
* Or is he after something in between linear storytelling and arborescent argumentation?
* If he's telling a story, is Marx doing "serious" history, developing a typological narrative of modern exchange, which [as I think you're suggesting, Ben] lays waste to its precursors as it moves forward?
* Or is he proceeding from first principles--like Hobbes in Leviathan--and writing an implicit polemic [raising and devastating arguments without stooping to the naming of names], while mitigating his broadside by allowing it to take the structure of a story?
* Or is he after something in between linear storytelling and arborescent argumentation?
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