-
2 Triumphant Capitalism
2.1 In Search of a critiqueThus we have been chained more and
more to capitalism. We were fastening our chains to it, while we
were filled with the feelings of fighting it, aiming to overthrow
it. A bitter reality. Capitalism has swallowed its outside, Marxism
with it, and digestion seems to be completed by now. A triumphant
Capitalism1 is in fronts of us and has engulfed us. An unchallenged
one? It is, as it stands now! Is there any grounds left - or could
open itself to us, for a renewed critique of capital? Could any
critique would be possible at all? By whom? How? Why? On what
grounds? This is the question. The question which I've not fount
any answer to it. It is a search, not a search all on the familiar
tracks, and with a danger in getting lost - or to being lost?
Needless to say, it is what, that make for me an assessment of
Marxism, or attempts in re-reading of Marx justified and
interesting. I'm not interested in that 'disinterested', or the
'objective' kind of research-assessments, or the kind of scientific
knowledge and views. There is an Ideology of Science, I believe,
which I do not accept and I'm trying to avoid it, when possible and
when it is discernible to me. I'm not ashamed of speculative
thoughts. The craft of the hypothesis-monger is not a bad one. As
far as this craft could shed some light aheadof me. Even when it
indicate that 'there is no way out' and all search for a break is
doomed to be in vain. As I was running away from Marxism, or the
ruins, the left barren and deserted site of it, I found myself
going back again and again to Marx. Icould not do without him.
Every search will be in the shadow of the Marx. My plan is to go
back again to the 'site of ruins'- to assess the theoretical
foundation of Marxism, and then examine the kinds of critiques
which have become fashion after it and have occupied its deserted
space, now in the full. There are a twin pare of criticism,
whichseems to hold sway. I can brand them, in advance, one as the
priestly
1 See Notes of Revision, What is Capitalism?!
1
-
critic, probably the oldest type of criticism, the self-image
and self-criticism of power of itself, now reshaping itself in two
branches the Justice-Moralist view and the Objective-Scientific
view. The other one, the Equality and Freedom critic, as the
self-image and self-criticism of capitalism of itself, its
Ideology- if one like to use Marxist terms. But, before that, first
I'd like to settle some accounts with some objections which are, or
which could be, raised against Marx, and in reading his texts.
2.2 Objections to Marx
2.2.1 The Promised Land is Lost!, The Problem of
Transformation
Marx in his perception of abolition of capital, the overthrowing
of capitalism, remain at a legal, juridical level, he fails to
depict any social transformation out of capitalism.I feel being
lost at the face of such an objection! First of all, I'm not
surewhich Marx is here being criticized? Objection points to whom?
Is it not the Marx of Marxism? (The Jesus which Paul made out of
him, not Jesus himself?!) Is it not that modern prophet, which we
were being told about him, that he used science to reveal the
secret of all history and foresee the destiny of all mankind? The
reincarnation of that ancient fiery spirit of messianic Jewish
prophet, pointing and warning to the incoming Apocalypse? A Jewish
prophet, which (following Jesus?!) break with Moses tradition, left
Jews to bring the promise of the land of bread and honey to
proletariat of all nations, the slaves of modern Pharaohs,
capitalists, the slaves which by the way of their act
ofself-liberation, will liberate all the humanity out of slavery
for ever? Is it not all the critique of this prophet? The promised
land you showed us was on the paper! Mere legality! Just changing
property titles and leaving social relations beyond that, intact!
Hopefully we have escaped from the constrains of Marxism doctrine
and away form it "revealing false revelations" could be just
another religious game. We leave the prophet and his ex-believers
to rest. Let us go back to more serious part of this objection! It
is probably right. I think, there is an unresolved transformation
problem, not so much in Marxism
2
-
doctrine, but with Marx himself too. He has texts which could
amount to a judicial view, or could be read and interpreted in this
manner, if onewants. He many times hints at the idea that capital
turns all the previously scattered and isolated means of production
into connected and concentrated social bodies, it makes them social
means of production in their function and character, and then it is
for most part a matter of socializing the ownership of them,
turning the private ownership of these socialized mean of
production into direct public property.2 Marx knew, probably better
than anybody else, that forms of
2 There is another thorny theme involved here. Is social
character of the vast amount of 'productive forces' separable from
their physical existence? Are them transformable? Are these not, or
has not become, the 'productive forces' of capitalist society,
mainly the productive forces of production and reproduction of this
special from of social relations itself? Are not most of them fixed
to this form of society? To the production of capitalism with all
its internal working? Do these forces have, or they could retain,
any 'use value' without capitalism, beyond it?! There is not any
innocence 'mean of production', not anymore, I bet. At least not
somuch at the present state of technology. The capitalist character
is not seems to be separable from the greatest extents of the
present material means, or even forces, of production, from their
physical, institutional, informational and technological and
'virtual' existence. Choose any industry you want. Car industry?
Sex, fashion, porn industry? Bank, credit, finance industry?
Entertainment along electronic industry? War, terror, crime or
health industry?! Marketing, Law, PR, affection industries?! I
doubt if there could be so much salvageable in many of these
industries from their capitalist skins, veins and muscles. As soon
as we put aside the 'economy of subsistence"- and this economy has
been on the road of an ever diminishing size and volume form when
capitalism took over- then, how much of 'productive forces' and
means of production in the other economy, which to distinguish it
from the 'economy of subsistence' I would call the 'economy of
social relations', would yield themselves to any changed social
relations? Taking over the productive forces, that battle cay of
state-builder Marxists, is not any real step in changing social
relations. At least not anymore. I'd like to come back to
thisdistinction between 'economy of subsistence' and 'economy of
social relations', a distinction though artificial and very much
make-shift kind of theoretic observation, probably would be useful
to shed some light in this thorny theme which I just mentioned. It
perhaps has something to do with the summary treatment of
'use-value' in Marx analyses. Use-value is a bearer of
exchange-value. But how this relation changes the character of
use-value itself? Does not theform of exchange-value making a vast
amount of use-values just the bearer of exchange- values without
any other use outside of this relation?! Money itself
3
-
property rights are and could only be the surface effects of
much more entrenched social relations. Here I'd like to give even
to Marx the Prophet some credit, which is really his own! He
thought of changing the property form, the transfer of ownership,
as a first step which has to be enforced by a political act and
will. He also knew that legal verdicts, rights and property titles,
all have as their first, and last, resort, the naked force as their
source of validity, the way of their enactment! Here, our prophet
differ from Jesus! He called to arm, to use the violence, to do
revolution. He called for the Dictatorship of Proletariat". This
could not be put out of the Marx picture of social transformation.
Changing property forms, for him, is not judicial but political.
Not merely political either, the overthrowing and replacing
thepower of capitalist class by proletariat one.
2.2.2 Two traits?! Agitator and Thinker!
Marxism officially presents itself as the righteous heir of
"German Philosophy, French Socialism, England Political Economy".
The notorious three components. It was the way Marxism looked at
itself, and liked to be looked at, having all its credentials at
display. It all maybe true as far as Marxism is concerned. I do not
like to buy it for looking at Marx himself! More than this famous
three components andthree sources, my guess is that there are two
currents in Marx thoughts and personality which are much more
telling than that. They are, at some and probably more active
level, class struggle and critic of political economy- or could be
named so. Did Marx ever managed to bring these two traits together
in a coherent way, or did he illustrate their relations in any
convincing way? Not, as I understand it. Was he a system maker?
Probably he was and he tried hard at it. But in this matter the
system is broken, apparently from the start to finish. There is two
traits in Marx and these two remains separate, competing with each
other to get upper hand, one at the expense of the other. In this
sense, there is a duality in Max, an unresolved one, exposing to
irony his endeavor in keeping to a unitary world view. This way,
leaving Marx the prophet to rest, there are, to me, two other Marx
which one
stands for striking evidance.
4
-
could call to accounts for the problem of transformation. Marx,
the thinker which we meet mostly in the critique of political
economy; one that confine his thinking to the limits of this
science, and thoroughly examines the premises of it. And Marx, the
agitator, one who find the class struggle the driving force in
changing the world. The political Marx, if we want, bu the Marx
which here, too, in his political theories, fails to work out a
theory of state, though he put a great emphasize on the political
power which state is and has been its pinnacle and embodiment.
There is a blind gap, or may one say an abyss, between these two
Marx. (Here, I'm going ahead of myself in these points, which I
intent to come back to them later). Now, let first tofollow the
agitator, calling him to account for the transformation problem.For
Marx, the agitator, as we said the transformation has to go
through, or to be mediated by, political power, through the
Proletariat Dictatorship. Transformation is to be imposed, to be
forced on by violence. Marx agitated for it, organized and
theorized for it, did endless polemics against those who were shy
at counting for force or preached marginal, new community type way
of evasion of capitalism, instead of aiming to its transformation.
There was not any automatic transformation in the pictures which he
depicted. (The second international and later flirtations with
democracy, reformist and peaceful transformation is another story).
Transformation for Marx, remained a practical matter which theory
could only cast a very dim light at it. For Marx, this act,
proletarian revolution, goes pretty much ahead of theory. (Remember
his reaction to Paris Commune and his praise for it, which in his
view was pretty much ahead of theory, showing the forms and
possibility of proletarian dictatorship.) He calledon proletariat
to act, to do the revolution, and told to him: believe in yourself
and just do it, everything else just follow suit if you adjust
yourself to your power. The whole world is there to conquer and
only chains to lose! Was Marx right in his agitation?! How we can
measure wright or wrongof it?! I think he was. Why not? Really! If
capitalism was imposing itself with naked force all over the face
of globe, if its hands was
5
-
imbued with blood, if violence is the decisive game in the town,
why not stand to force with an equally coherent and organized
force, why not imitate or use the capitalism ways of acting and
enforcing?! I'm not really sure if German uprising could succeed
and instead of Nazi Germany ww2 was fought by Germany of Workers,
Socialist, Communists (pick one you want), if Marxism fate was not
totally entangled with the fate of Russian and her catching up game
with modernity, what we had today was this unchallenged triumphant
capitalism! Probably not the promised socialism either, but I'll
bet a way of life differing somehow from both, and maybe as
resilient one as capitalism itself?! Very wild and an uneducated
backward speculation indeed! But my point, or my understanding, is
that the instinct of force, this deep rooted instinct of political
animal3 was used by Marx agitator to fill the great gap which left
empty and open in his theoreticalthinking. (Was not Lenin the heir
of this blind trait in Marx thought and character?! Look, I have
already too many parentheses which push me out the subject!)
History did not strike that course of actions, and I'm left with my
further questions.
2.2.3 Class Struggle
Was Marx, the agitator, betraying Marx the thinker? Did he put
aside his line of analyses and deeper insight for the sake of
agitation, or perhaps these insights came to him later in time,
insights which we find in a more mature form in Grundrisse and
Capital?! The text which give our agitator thoughts a free ride,
free from later insights into politicaleconomy is that grand recipe
for action, the Communist Manifesto. And this free ride thinking on
the wave of class struggle, has its own
3 Instead of political animal, I'd like to use the term
city-animal. I hope to betterdistinguish and opposed him to other
one: tribal animal, or herd animal. This one has for his prevailing
instinct the gregariousness of the herd. Instead of power play
among the citizens its is used to force out a head from the body of
tribe, or the head, and to follow this head, to become resentful
and revengeful against the head and himself! A Bio-power, genetic
distinction between culture of Greek city-states and Jewish, old
testament, culture? Or for that matter between former and the
Chinese or Iranian one?! I'll have a better chance to delve in this
theme latter!
6
-
blind spots too! At the head of this text we read:The history of
all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.
It is the key sentence to whole body of this text, a key which
become a source of criticism, explanation and drawing conclusion
from it regarding the status and fate of bourgeois society. But,
was this sentencereally a correct, not a selective, more or less an
accurate outlining of history? We had the history of hitherto
existing societies and the history of class struggles. Were these
two, one and the same? Was it an oversimplifications for the sake
of argument, or a deliberate omission of one whole line of
histories for the benefit of the other line of histories- the
omission of societies in the benefit on class struggles? Could we
not say that the history of every existing society, and at the
middle of 19th century there were many of them standing on their
own, not as yet all being integrated into the world market, was not
the history of all those separate and independent societies, at the
same time, the history of their constant struggle for power and
survival against others, the struggle which some time drivingthem
to the brink of extinction in the hand of their competitors? Was
Enlightenment influence and it exaltation of humanity too strong to
making even Marx inclined to forget about, or cover up, animality
in history of humanity, or in constitution of its societies?! We
know that many societies could sustain their existence and many
were perished. Was not the mere fact of existence as much the
outcome of this more than often mutual savagery, violence, wars and
blood baths? The outcome of competing for territory, dominance and
living or empowerment at the expense of the other side? Was not
this outer, the exterior constrain and context of existence of
societies, playing as much an important role as the one which class
struggle played inside these societies? Was not the history of
societies at the same time, or more than class struggle, the
history of non-ending violence between societies, their territorial
power game? Is not any serious theory of political power, and a
theory of state, obliged to takeinto account this outer context,
this bedrock of all history? Orthodox Marxism Doctrine tends to
call even the ancient wars the class wars, as
7
-
it did call the WWI and WWII capitalist wars. But this will not
do in thelater cases, let alone the former. It will stretch the
class, and the class struggle too thin for covering everything,
overriding nations, societies, and states, entities which had more
than often a more coherent configuration, stronger cementation, and
are more capable of act as a body, compare with classes which are
diffused in the bodies of states and nations - and it seems to be
even more true in later times. Class struggle was one force among
many others and not always that force dominating, but most often
under the constrain and dominance of the others forces. Could not
the passed history could be read more richly at the level of
states? This is the level at which the power functions of any
society derived form its interior relations as well as the
constrains imposed form its exterior, took shape and solidifies
itself in it. I fall, leaning towards this view of the passed,
pre-capitalist history of societies, then any class-struggle
view!Then, there is that related and thorny theoretical question
itself: what is a class?! Is not class something more connected to
state than to political economy, or lets say to the relations of
production? Classes had to be sustained by economy, by relations of
production, but it does not mean that they arose from it, or being
equally involved in it. Many classes stood outside the imminent
sphere of production and its internal relations and this fact was
what that made them a class. In pre-capitalist modes of production,
the dominant class, nobles, priests, sultan, 'divan', are outside
the proper sphere of production. When they did engage themselves
more directly in production process, it was whenthey were consuming
the surplus labor and surplus product of land, in building their
monuments, palaces, churches, mosques, castles, in doingkillings or
produce killing equipment the war enterprises. Putting it in my
make-shift terms, the economy of subsistence and the economy of
social relations were separate from each other, often even in
space, and the force was what bridged them together. It was
historical setting and the state in its attempts in ordering social
strata, which invented, maintained and imposed classes. Political
economy, or production of material life, by itself could stay clear
and innocent of classes.4
4 In Athens city-state there was heard many complains, among
others from the
8
-
Putting it in a black and white color, class is a product of
history and notthe economy. Class struggle too, could be considered
as a sub-part of violence which drove the general history along
other forces.Marx tries to strike a compromise with himself in
order to assign to class struggle the central stage. He has an eye
on a basic trend in capitalism which could and would bring down all
territorial frontiers, which could bring about a world society
integrating all separate and independent societies into its
encompassing orbit. Exterior context and constrains was vanishing,
at least theoretically. In this picture, the inner force, the class
struggle, would be the dominant and determining one. Itis how
Manifesto depict class struggle. Two problem lies here: Marx in his
analyses of capital, considers it in its developed state. When
capitalism is standing on its own feet, general rate of profit has
been formed and is in place, meaning all production is now mediated
throughcirculation, all surplus labor take the form surplus value,
profit, interest,wages, taxes, are all arouse from capitalist
production itself and not anymore from exploiting the others forms
and sphere of production. It is a modeling like any other so called
scientific modeling, when one putaside all which seems to be
accidental, effects of other influences, and try to reduce the
whole thing to its own patterns of regularity. It could work for
political economy, where it can reveal at a theoretical level all
possibilities and limits of capital as objectified labor
confronting living one, on the track which already was paved by
Smith and Ricardo.But this kind of modeling, scientific or not,
could be very risky and could fail badly at the level of history or
analyses of developing bourgeoisie society. From mid 19th century,
British Empire and its effort to establish a world market and a
world Empire on a capitalist line, to a world society which would
be the equivalent of capitalism fully stand by itself, or
capitalism fully realized, there is a very long shot. In the path
way there has been, territorial states, nations, and nation-states,
numerous power-weighing wars, Soviet Empire, two WW,the collapse of
British and up and down of American Empire and as yet
Plato's friends, that in agora it is not possible anymore to say
who is free and who is slave! The slaves and free citizens more
than often shared the same condition of life.
9
-
we could not say that mission is accomplished, that we are
living in the world society. Modeling could not replace or capture
the reality in the sphere of history and politics, which are at
least event-driven and are prey to chance and accident in the
ever-shifting balance of powers. Probably Marx himself taught us
about these points, better than all others when he was commenting
on his own contemporary history and its events. It was the first.
The second problem is this: what will happen to labor itself in the
sphere of political economy? What is a class, whichwith political
economy now has become an economical class? First I'll try to
tackle the second question. And my best guess, or suspicion, for an
answer, is that it was Young Hegelian philosophical tricks which
could save Marx the agitator from Marx the thinker in these
matters!
2.2.4 The class
The problem of transformation could also be reduced to this one:
Was not Marx, in his assessment of wage-laborers as class, its
potential in that capacity to bring about a social transformation,
too much off? Off, from his own analyses and insight? Was
proletariat really a class, capable of carrying on what the power
agitators, or their philosophical tricks, burden him with it? What
really a class in capitalism was, and how much wage-laborer could
constitute a separate one, a class which could be brought under its
own and independent ceilings, a body standing on its own? Was the
class defined from the view-point of political economy will be the
same with the class which one can drawfrom a historical setting?
What is expected of a class is this: she is capable to bring about,
and actually carry with himself, not in his inspirations, but in
his distinctive way of life, a specific form of society. Was not
Marx which probably more the anyone else, pointed us in look at a
class this way? Embodiment of a distinct way of social life. It was
what bourgeoisie was and proved to be. Was working class of the
same mold?Looking in this light, the working class seems to be one
of the least capable among all known and named classes. How can
this class could signify a separate form of society of its own, in
an active and positive manner and outside capitalism? Wage-labor is
condition of capital, or is
10
-
capital itself, if looking at it from other side of capital
relation. Even peasants had a better shot at it! Peasants had a
style of living which lordcould be exclude from it and their mode
of life suffice to bring about and define societies of their own.
Is it not funny to demand form workers to forge an independent
class identity, solidify it, for the purpose of annihilating it,
for dissolving it in a classless society?! In the face of it, it
amounts to the worse of all Hegelian tricks! No, wage-laborers were
not that class - merchant with sword, the pirate merchant, which
came out of blue with all its violence and cunning, turned himself
into merchant-banker and make the world after its own image. New
proletariat was not bourgeoisie, that class which against and among
other classes, fought for the bringing down all barrier to his life
style, commerce and trade, and sat down to out root all the
classes, orders, and ranks which could not find a solid foot-hold
in commerce and trade. Bourgeoisie was The Class. The last product
of historical setting if we like. He was all embracing class,
bringing all, forcing all population into its own mode of life. New
proletariat was its creation and not this, he too was created after
its own image, from its own mold. He too was man of trade and
commerce, though a poor one, having nothing else than its
labor-power to trade. Looking from this side, from the sphere of
circulation in the economic condition, working class is capitalist
class!5 It was destined to become 5 I'm infected here by those
images flying around in the Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari attractive work, Anit-Oedipus, Capitalism and
Schizophrenia. Could it be a symptom of French influenza, or
post-modern disease?! They- the authors, have a picture of
capitalism as the limit to all other forms of societies. The limit
other societies could reach. Here, casts, orders, classes and all
previously given social hierarchies are dissolved in the one
unitary flow, the flow of money, one cansay. Authors refer to
Pelekhanov which notes that the French School of the nineteenth
century, under the influence of Saint-Simon, should be credited
with thediscovery of class struggle and its role in history
-precisely the same men who praise the struggle of the bourgeois
class against the nobility and feudalism, and who come to a halt
before the proletariat and deny that there can be any difference in
class between the industrialist or banker and the worker, but only
a fusion into one and the same flow as with profits and wages p255.
They add that looking intohistory in terms of class struggle, could
amount to insisting in a bourgeoisie outlook. Their work is really
attractive and full of new sights and insights. But for me it
suffer from the worst kind of anti Hegel, anti-dialectic which I
think was
11
-
part and parcel of the class. If one insist, what has been
called class struggles could be seen as 'inter class struggle', the
fierce competition which is the condition of bourgeoisie's
life.
2.2.5 Labor and Political Economy
Now we could turn to Marx the thinker for the subject of
transformation. Did he, out of critique of political economy and
his breathtaking analyses of capital, show or trace any necessary,
self-moving, autonomous kind of social transformation out of
capitalism? Does labor move in such a direction or pave the way
for, carry and inter-grow with such a transformation, just waiting
for a midwife - in shape of a political revolution, to give birth
to it, or give it a last push bringing it to its full power?! At
the very outset, let me put aside what could be considered, or
could be named, the preconditions, or the material foundation, of a
possibility for a social transformation out of slavery. Here the
only line which seems certain is this: capitalism put a decisive
end to predominance of,
the French fashion of the day. The book is like depicting a
stormy river by the way of making a lot of snapshots of it, static
pictures, from a lot of angles and distances. You see those images,
some of them very decisive and telling which otherwise could not be
seen. But the movement of the river always fails you, it escape
even from your strongest grip, it becomes beside you, not sizable,
like Kantian thing in itself, closed to you. You could know
everything about thing without knowing it. Thing remain for itself
and will not become yours! Reading their works, gave me a lot of
trouble. A difficult work. One gets buried under abundance of
images they produce. In contrast, Hegelian style is like taking the
buffalo by its horns! It is a dive into the stormy river and moving
with it. You are not an observer, an image maker, at best you could
have blurry images, but you become prat of movement, your force and
efforts too is part of it, you may be blindto many, many of its
moments, but there remain no things in itself, it is always your
relation to the thing, not thing itself, or you, which occupies the
center- a nice strategy from overcoming the subject-object
division! As you see I pretty much prefer this Hegelian style, when
ever it is applicable, and as far as it give me free ride! But it
is a dangerous sport. The chances of a deadly crash to the banks of
river, the History, or being entangled with debris which the
current assemble in font of itself out of your sight, is very high!
Kantian disinterest and objective knowledge which leave things in
themselves, is much safer bet! There is a reason why everybody is
afraid of Hegel! I plan to come back to this point in main
text.
12
-
lets call it the economy of subsistence. This does not exclude
that other forms of society, like those found in pre-capitalist
modes of life, could not do it too! Capitalism, differ in that,
that it give shocking drives to the productivity of labor, blows
productivity out of any hitherto known or imagined proportions.
According to Marx, along the way of capitalism development, though
the needs increase and multiply, the needs which are either imposed
by nature or just arise from the complexity and improvements in
social living, the needs which have to be satisfied in order that
society be able to sustain itself, this necessary labor for
satisfying needs, decrease and diminish in all relative
measurements. Relative to total available labor time which could be
at the disposal of society; relative to daily labor time which
every man can master reasonably in himself; relative to working
life-span which everyone is endowed wit it. That is all! That
material precondition for stepping out of slavery, or precondition
of a transformation to a non-slavery social relationships, if we
could name itso. Ancient Greek culture looked at toiling and
laboring, the drudgery of bringing out a life out the breast of
land, as a shameful slavery, deserve only for slaves, but
unavoidable for free man too. Life of a free-man could not be
drudgery, but being entertained or being educated by Sophies in the
art of pleasures and pains, knowing himself, mastering his own
life, cultivating his taste and emotions, playing philosophical
orathletics games, engaging in politics, exercising in the art of
oratory andsocial persuasion, hanging with fiends, arranging
festivals, dancing and drinking and playing with gods,
contemplating at the sight of tragedies or laughing at himself in
the sight of comedies, pretty much what all lifeis about or could
give a worldly meaning and purpose to it. Capitalism brought about
this precondition, the possibility of stepping out of shameful
slave life. We know that there is a possibility open to us in a
very wide scale in and with capitalism. It is all that there is to
it. Let's forget about that now silly looking and miserable
exercise which was infashion some times ago, the socialism of
productive forces! That game is out of the town, though its child,
the full occupation is with us and hunt us. The child now is an
orphan, had grown into the worst and most corrupted one,
prostituting itself with the game of job
13
-
creations at every door, turning every politician into its fully
occupied pimp! All that is forgotten about is that the whole
justification for capitalism and its development, that
justification which many socialist with Marxist leaning or not
bought it, was to make us and everybody else pretty much jobless,
having time to enjoy the life! The point is that this possibility
of stepping out of slavery, this possibility of a social
transformation, is the same the possibility, or the potential of
capitalism itself. Capitalism create it and rely on it. Driving the
productivity of labor to unimaginable heights and driving the
economy of subsistence to ever diminishing scale, it is the whole
story of capitalism, the source of all its power and its command.
The gap which is open, however and whenever it is wider, capitalism
acts stronger. It is the gap which M-M', money begetting money
create, defend and widen it. It is its home and its living place.
Let's put it in these words: pre-condition of transformation is the
ever reproducing of potential of capitalism itself. It tell us
nothing. If there is a sea, it does not mean one can or want to
swim in it. Possibility is just over there, not as a neutral
ground, not as no-man's land. It is occupied by capital. The other
point to make at outset is this: the theme of a Proletarian
Revolution, that forceful actor of historical setting, is not an
actor in the theater of political economy. Nothing in the sphere of
political economy calls for it. It is not part of conceptual
analyses and can not emerge from it. It is out of stage actor. One
which Marx brings in in his analyses for the sake of moral
sensations, or dialectical dramatization. In the course of analyses
it can only comes in and acts like deus ex machina (god from a
machine) in the manner of ancient Greek theater!It is not a player
by itself. We leave the occupied territory of transformation and
our out of the stage explorer of it, aside and to restfor now.
2.2.6 Labor Transformed ? Two Forms of Labor?
That out of our way, lets go ahead and consult the wisdom of
political economy. With political economy we leave behind the
history. Classes,here are striped down from their historical
casting, they are unburdened
14
-
from their political and cultural heritage, stripped down to
their mere economical bare bones. In wisdom of political economy,
as Marx have it,capitalist is a personification of capital.
Wage-laborer too is a personification of living labor. Beside, in
the course of Marx analyses, or his critique of political economy,
we have to leave the sphere of circulation to meet the labor in its
true existence. In that sphere of circulation, capitalist and
wage-laborer were from the same mold. They both stood on an equal
footing, as traders, and as free man in charge of their own body
and mind, and in the legal and actual command of their belongings.
This world of the sameness, equality and freedom is behind us. We
have entered into the sphere of production, where in Marx account
we could find all the covered up secrets of capital. It is the
central stage, the power house which keep other spheres running
around it and encompassing it. In this sphere capital and labor are
not same mold, there become opposite, or the live and dead form of
the same thing. They are not on equal foot either. The dead,
objectified labor, commands and consume the live labor. The
objectified and living labor, stand oppose to each others, in a
relation of command and obedience, eating and being eaten up. Now
I'll try to outline the story of this opposition as Marx worked it
up, in the most stretched and generalized sketch. Leaving aside all
actual, social and historical constrains and counter balancing
tendencies, I'll be only concern with the theoretical and
conceptual limits, the utmost reaches of all the possibilities of
this relation, this opposition. Fortunately I do not need to labor
it, Marx did it himself and I'll just going to quote him. To the
astonishment of many Marxists, it probably do not works in its
predicted Hegelian track, do not give birth to a new relations
sublating its parents opposite ones! Let us see!Another flashback
is necessary. Every imaginable production could be seen as coming
together, the confronting of the passed, objectified laborand
living labor. Even the hunter brought his stick or stone tool, his
passed work, at the service of his live activity, catching the
prey. This is a fact of life and not one which is only special to
its capitalist form. Though, in capitalist form this relation seem
to have been somehow reversed. Instead of dead serving the live, it
is the living activity that
15
-
serve the dead one. All this, because capitalist production is
not any productions, it is value production. Living labor is not
using passed labor for producing some use value in order to
entertain oneself, or to satisfy some need, desire, whim, or
arousing them whatsoever. Living labor is used and consumed by dead
labor for maintaining and adding toits own value. We have to go
back to value relation and keep in mind that the production and
labor process, is subsumed in value-relation, and is only one phase
of reproduction of value-relation itself. The whole body of
political economy was being built around the labor theory of value.
Consistency in elaborating it and explaining different phenomenons
at the surface of circulation in terms of this theory, was a
criterion which Marx often used to distinguish a serious economist
form the vulgar one. According to political economy, thelabor which
is at the bottom of value-relation is not any labor. It is a
special form of labor, labor in its form of homogeneity, reducible,
countable and exchangeable. It is abstract labor, human activity
stripped to its bare bones, the expenditure of muscle and brain,
measurable with its intensity and its duration in time. It is not
the concrete work of producing use-values, means for satisfying
needs and whims, which is common in all ages. In Marx own words,
the labor that forms the substance of value is equal human labor,
the expenditure of identical human labor power. Socially necessary
labor-time. This is the labor which produce values, and is
separable from the labor which produces use-values. Marx is very
strict on this characterization. He emphasizes that I was the first
to point out and examine critically this twofold nature of labor
contained in commodities. It is this homogeneous, measurable, the
abstract labor, distinct and separable form useful or concrete
work, which he establishes as the solid base of his reconstructing
or his critique of political economy. Needless to say, for Marx
this abstract labor, labor pure and simple, is not a theoretical
device, a scientific gauge torender reality constrained and under
observation. It is reality itself, the social reality, the form
which labor takes or imposed on it to be used and accounted as
socially-necessary labor6. It is the capitalist from of
6 Marx explain adequately the reality of abstract labor among
others in the following
16
-
labor, or a form of labor which capitalism found it emerging
from commodity production, took it over and drove it to dominance
as common form of labor, the source of its own empowering. As
capitalist counts only as personification of capital, wage-laborer
too, counts as embodiment of this form of labor, the abstract, the
mere expenditure of muscle and brain, labor power, simple and
devoid form any further usefulness and concreteness. How can we
identify this form of labor at the level of actuality and in its
physical being, not in value relation which manifest itself in the
sphere of circulation, where this relation tend to hide itself out
of sight, but in the concrete processes of production and its place
and role in it? I can get help form Marx text, when he describes
another form of labor, this too formed in the relation of capital
and is caught in the net of capitalism, but totally distinguishable
from the homogeneous, abstract labor, which lies at bottom and
constituted the historical base of value relation.
Labor no longer appears so much to be included within the
production process; rather, the human being comes to relate to
text: The last point to which attention is still to be drawn in
the relation of labour to capital is this, that as the use value
which confronts money posited as capital, labour is not this or
another labour, but labour pure and simple, abstract labour;.. the
worker himself is absolutely indifferent to the specificity of his
labour; it has no interest for him as such, but only in as much as
it is in fact labour and, as such, a use value for capital. It is
therefore his economic character that he is the carrier of labour
as suchi.e. of labour as use value for capital; he is a worker, in
opposition to the capitalist. This is not the character of the
craftsmen and guild-members etc., whose economic character lies
precisely in the specificity of their labour and in their relation
to a specific master, etc. This economic relation- the character
which capitalist and worker have as the extremes of a single
relation of production- therefore develops more purely and
adequately in proportion as labourloses all the characteristics of
art; as its particular skill becomes something more and more
abstract and irrelevant, and as it becomes more and more a purely
abstract activity, a purely mechanical activity, hence indifferent
to its particular form; a merely formal activity, or, what is the
same, a merely material activity, activity pure and simple,
regardless of its form. p296 Grundrisse. Moreover, what is
interesting in this text is the positing of capital and abstract
labor as two extreme of a single relation of production whose
development is marked by transforming all the previous form of
labor into this form. Abstract labor is characterized as use-value
of capital here. We can mark, in reverse, or on the other end of
extreme, capital as being the exchange-value of abstract labor.
17
-
production process more and more as its watchman and as its
regulator, rather than being pat of production process itself.
(What holds for machinery holds likewise for the combination of
human activities and the development of human intercourse.) No
longer does the worker insert a modified natural thing as middle
link between the object and himself; rather, he inserts the process
of nature, transformed into an industrial process, as a means
between himself and inorganic nature, mastering it. He steps to the
side of the production process instead of being its chief actor. In
this transformation, it is neither the direct human labor he
himself performs, nor the time during which he works, but rather
the appropriation of his own general productive power, his
understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his
presence as a social body - it is, in a word, the development of
the social individual which appears as the great foundation-stone
of production and of wealth.
This lines are quoted from a passage in Grundrisse, when Marx is
contemplating on the Machinery and living labor and Contradiction
between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure)
and its development. Machines etc. For the time when it was
written, not far passed from mid 19th century, not only the lines
quoted above, but the whole passage strike one as a very audacious
and wild theoretical speculation. As I said, a far reaching
theorizing on the limits of possibilities. I'll return to this
passage with more quotes from it. It worthevery bit pausing at it.
It tell us much more about the present day capitalism and the place
of labor in it, than all those historiographic accounts about
condition of working class, the conditions which any honest eye
looking at it, could not avoid the deep sentiments involved in it,
those sentiments which I believe bothered Marx too throughout
histheoretical exposition on capital and tainted it out-of-place,
here and there, with a touch of morality. It is another matter. I
was trying to figure out the labor which wage-laborers, in
constituting an economical class, are personification of it. The
text quoted contrast this form of labor with another form, or could
be used to do so. It seems that we have two forms of labor, both
under the mold and stamp of capital, but
18
-
non-the-less different forms as far as their role in the
production processand their place in the development of productive
forces is concerned. The first is the familiar one, it counts and
constitutes the building block of political economy. It is the
abstract, homogeneous labor, measurable with time and capable of
providing a base for value and its forms, exchange-value, money,
prices, wages, profits, etc. This labor, in its physicality, is a
part, is enclosed in material production process itself.It is the
labor involved it the material production process as one of its
inner elements. It is a modified natural thing which laborer insert
as middle link between the object and himself. It is part of
production process itself and is consumed in it. It is productive
labor measurable in time. It is labor, replaceable with machines, a
modified natural force which could be replace with another tamed
and modified force or any such a process from nature. The other
form of labor, is the transformed one. It does not seem as exerting
a modified natural thing, but is characterized as exercising,
discharging, putting to action of a charged or accumulated social
force7- a force which individual becomes its accumulator. It is a
kind of labor, which stay aside, or step to the side of production
proper, acting as its watchman, regulator, designer, or in more
general terms, it the work involved in all other social layers
which encompass the production as its core, the labor involved in
preparing, stimulating, manipulating social forces and social7 I've
not managed to phantom what Toni Negri calls immortal labor.
Probably it
is similar, could correspond, or is the same in some extent as
this transformed labor which I try to depict here. I've not managed
to read his influential work withHardt, Empire, to the end as yet.
According the Anderson, this work, with the Givani Arraghi's the
long twentieth century, had been most prominent theoreticalMarxists
works in recent yeas. Anyway, my first impression encountering
Nigris immortal labor was not encouraging and push me away from his
work. It seemedto me he is despair to find something to restore the
lost world of the opposition of capital and labor, that central
theme of Marxism. It happens that I look from another end of
spectrum, I guess. Making it completely black and white, striped of
all its shades of gray, the transformed labor to me is not against
or oppose to capital. It is the site of capital, the living force
of it in the present configuration of capitalist society. In this
view labor has lost all its innocence, it is the main accomplice of
present time slavery, slavery to labor. Critique of capital push me
in the direction of critique of labor! I could amount to turning
the Marx of his head, or on his feet, depending from where one
looks at it!
19
-
body to set and keep in motion the material production. This
second form could be seen more in that field which Marx puts in
parentheses, the work involved in the combination of human
activities and the development of human intercourse. From the
standpoint of capital, it isthe labor which is more involved in the
outer, exterior, life cycle of capital, that which engulf
production, stimulate it, bring it to halt, or drive it to
explosive proportions.How political economy, or Marx in his
critique of it, accounts for thissecond form of labor? Marx is
badly in pain, in Volume III of Capital,when he apparently opposes
the capitalist notion which regards the profits of enterprise -
that part of profit which after counting the rent, interest, and
taxes, and deducing them from total profit, remain in his hands his
wage, wage of his own labor, his labor of superintendence.
Since the estranged character of capital, its antithesis to
labour, is shifted outside the actual process of exploitation, i.e.
into interest-bearing capital, this process of exploitation itself
appears as simply a labor process, in which the functioning
capitalist simply performs different work from that of the workers.
The labor of exploiting and the labor exploited are identical, both
being labor. The labor of exploiting is just as much labor as the
labor that is exploited. The social form of capital devolves on
interest, but expressed in a neutral and indifferent form; the
economic function of capital devolves on profit of enterprise, but
with the specifically capitalist character of this function
removed.
There is a bit of cat and mouse play of forms of capital here,
which suppose to say: watch, the interest-bearing form of capital
has shifted the estranged character of capital to outside of
production process, and that shift make one blind to antithesis
between labor and capital which remain at the core in the
production process. There is a subtle differentiation between the
social and economic functions of capitaltoo. Marx apparently, opts
for viewing it from social side. Alongside this, there came a
measured dose of morality, the sharp contrast of exploiting and
exploited labor. They have a meaning in social
20
-
view, but what about the economic one? Social view is supposed
hereto save Marx, in writing off the line of economic analyses, in
his failing to recognize the two forms of labor, and in his
reluctance of counting the labor of exploiting as labor, a labor
with a legitimate claim to wage as exploited labor has claim to it.
But what if the labor of exploiting is not laboring to make
somebody else launders his dirty underwear for him, but laboring to
exploit them in building the public rail roads? What if the
exploitation is not at personal level, but for the good of
accumulation of capital and in its fixation in the infrastructure
of productive forces? It has been what capitalists as a class have
always claimed. Exploitation is a moot argument, a notion with a
charge of morality, we better to write it off from the accounts of
political economy. Even Marx's social view, in its longer
perspectives, could not bear exploitation, when he, many times,
credits and with it justifies, the capital and bourgeoisie for
theirrole in unprecedented development of productive forces. I'll
leave this failing of Marx in Capital aside fro now. The point was
that there is two from of labor, not one, and the second from,
though not recognized in Capital, hunts the analyses there too. I
prefer to call these two forms of labor, first and second form, or
value-creating labor and valorizing-labor, if one prefer such names
that could hints to some significations. Let's try again to figure
out the theme in a morally neutral, or in an immoral, grounds. In
place of capitalist society, we can consider a society of the sort
of the famous example of association of free producers- not the
boring Christian, Amish type kind of communities, but some
imaginary lively one which will not deprive us from a lot of fun
discovered in present day capitalism if one have a choice in it! We
Can imagine this society based on two different assumptions, in two
extremes as much as political economy is concerned. First, our
imaginary society is out of grips pf political economy altogether.
It means that the work is not any longer something separable from
social life and social intercourse with all its enjoyments and
pains; the principle of work as something separable from life has
been vanished toa great extent, separation of work and life and
coupling of work and
21
-
reward, or work and wage or share, is at most a marginal
nonsense left over from previous forms of social life. Here there
is no political economy and with it social accounting has lost all
meanings. In our second assumption, the imagined society is still
one of the type of political economy. Work and rewards and social
accounting of it is at the core of social relations and
organizations. It is based on, as yet, the same fundamental
separation of work and life as two aliens which only wage or
rewards could bring them under one ceiling. We suppose, that there
is a lot fairness in sizing the rewards to the amount of work, and
there is a lot of accounting and planing for avoiding waste in
social production and organization. In other words, we have a
capitalism purged and cleansed according to priestly, moral,
criticism of fairness, and the scientific-technocratic criticism of
minimizing waste, but political economy is in place. In such a
society citizens have to work not for their direct-consumption, but
have to do work to replace the all which is consumed in their work,
and on top of this an extra portion for expanding the condition of
their work, and a plus for their whims, desire and having fun. They
have to do surplus-work. And to do all this,some of them have to do
the managerial, superintend work, some fun creating, desire and
whim stimulating work, some science and technological innovation
work, and some distribution and accounting work and some industrial
and production work. Apparently here too, wehave two different
kinds of work, lets call them social-work and production-work. We
can not deny here that social-work is work, social necessary works
though all the accounting labor could be seen as a big waste, as
the whole apparatus of welfare state in many European countries has
become itself a grand kind of waste more expensive to maintain
compare to cost of those which this apparatus is supposed to
maintain! Anyway, economy always is political economy, meaning,
under the constrain of social relations that economy has to uphold.
The question is how such a society remunerate such works, the
social-work. How does this kind of work enter into social
accounting? Twoalternative arises. As far as the production-work is
dominant, all claims of social-work, would be resolved on the bases
of surplus-work-hours of total production-work, what is left after
deducing the production-
22
-
workers rewards. But as the production-work lose it centrality
and its importance, and as the social-work become more predominant,
all bets will be off, social accounting and remunerations loses
their base and logic. The same processes which made possible to
replace production-work with machines, also make many services, and
servants, replaceable with machine too, and as a consequence the
social-work tends to become the kind of irreducible, heterogeneous,
not measurable kind of work, the kind of work which is involved in
accumulating and exertion of social power by individuals. As a
result, we will have a crisis of political economy. It is political
economy, because it is an economy on the foundation of work and
reward, and it is in crisis because work has ceased to be what it
used to be, the rod of all measurements and the bases of social
accounting. It seems, probably, asa purely technical matter, but
only at the face of it. Social-labor is not only heterogeneous, and
irreducible, it is charge and discharge of social-power8 in
individuals which are putting it in motion in social relations, or
looking at it form the other side, it is the power of social
relation itself which is charged in individual and is discharged by
him. It is something totally unaccountable on the basis of work and
reward. Capitalism does all that which our imaginary labor based
community does, and in case of capitalism, apparently without the
constrains of social fairness and social efficiency. Here instead
of work-hours, which in case of our imaginary society could be used
for value and valuation, value has its independent from and run its
own course. At the first phaseor stages, all claims of valorizing
labor, could be resolved in terms of
8 A good example of what could constitute 'social-labor', or
'valorizing-labor', could be found in Marx lively description of
theft work which give an impetus to vast range of all sorts of
works. It is an ironic, a little bit sarcastic, and very funny
passage in the Theories of surplus-value, when Marx expose how a
thief could be a productive laborer and theft a productive force.
Theft bring work for the police, the workers who produce food and
cloth and equipment for him, and so on. The whole social-body come
in motion by theft! It is the kind of valorizing labor, without any
moral and legal prejudice, the kind of work which keeps values in
circulations and give impetus to their creation out of blue in the
excitements of social body, it could be science, charm, crime, law.
It is the real economy which capital thrive in it, economy of
production is just a diminishing sub-part of it, and economy of
subsistence, even a much smaller part of the latter.
23
-
what is left of value-creating work, in terms of the pool of
total surplus-value available to it. But as we go on, as
value-creating works diminish,it is valorizing labor which put
claim to everything, to all available, and also potential wreath
which is now is produced and could be produced relatively
independent of labor, but has to be accounted and kept in motion
and circulation as values. We can not discriminate the exploiting
labor which is as necessary as exploited one in the course of value
creation. How much capitalist add to produced value with his work,
or is he, too, contributing to total surplus-value which he
extracts, is another matter. As much as capitalist step-aside from
production, replacing himself with managerial wage-salary workers,
or relying to a better trained, integrated self-exploiting workers
and redefined himself at the top their social ranks, we more see
that there was a capitalist work involved in production which
justified him to claim wage for it! Marx, in Capital, as I
mentioned, failed, or refused to distinguish clearlybetween these
two forms of labor. He did not work out those two stages in
development in productive forces, which give prominence to one or
another form of labor in turn. He did not bring the second from,
the valorizig labor, into analyses of value relations. Though, I
think, it hunts him in many guises, form example in the guise of
unproductive labor. What is this unproductive labor? Marx rightly,
reject Adam smith's characterization of it. For Max every labor
which create value, or contribute to creation and realization of
surplus-value counts as productive labor. Under this
characterization of productive labor one can count not only the
labor of capital, which could be performed by capitalist himself or
by the growing army of wage-earners who take over the function of
capital in both spheres of circulation and production, but one can
also counts all other labors of charlatans, thefts,criminals, law
worker and any imaginable labor all those labors whichoutside value
relation could be considered even destructive, any labor which
could give impetus and excitement to creations, circulation and
realization of values and surplus-value. Productive labor, in Marx
exposition of it, when he puts aside his social preferences and
moral judgments, and judging it only on its capitalist basis,
include both
24
-
value-creating and valorizig labor, though Marx did not
recognize the second from and do not give to it its due place in
the course of analyses. Marx insists in holding the criteria of
earlier stages. In his explanations, superintendent, managerial
works, scientific or technical invention, entrepreneurship in
exploring, or cultivating some new social needs or whims, arts, the
labor involved in these activities could claim for wage. But it did
not mean that this labor was a source of value, or could
createvalues. This from of labor did not create values, but had its
price and more often monopoly prices. It had its price, like the
land had its price or the capital had it, later in the form of
interest and former in the form of rent. It could be even a
monopoly price, like the best located lands in the heart of cities,
which could often be the case for the second form of labor too. But
this price, whatever its form of claimant, rent, interest, taxes,
salaries, was accounted as a ticket. A ticket to have a share in
the greater pie of total surplus-value which was extracted from the
first form of labor. Marx recognizes the second form of labor, in
the privacy of his manuscripts, not in the public face of published
Capital. We can guess why. In the mid 19th century, the second form
of labor was as yet in its very embryonic forms, one could see it
with the speculative theoretical eyes, but not in the actual
configurations of the capitalism of the day. Asfar as the first
form of labor, the value creating labor was the dominant form of
labor, the second form of labor could be considered as labor
ofexploiting, labor involved in upholding the overall condition of
the creation of greatest pie of surplus-value which claimants could
share among themselves. Even morality had its appeal there. The
antithesis between capital, the self-valorizing value, and the
first form of labor, value creating labor, seemed to be too strong
a force, not allowing anything to escape form its field of action
and influences. It was a magnet forcing everything to be either
attached or attracted to one of its two opposite poles. It was the
age of coal and iron. It cast its shadowsin the story of political
economy as Marx reconstructed and narrated it in Capital. All this
may or may not contributed to the expositions which Marx laid out
in Capital. But he was not the kind of thinker to give up
25
-
to morality or transient circumstances without a good
theoretical justification. I think he had one: price. Theory of
price, and specially monopoly price could explain and save the
phenomenon for a while.
2.2.7 Two trajectories in Marx's Critique
My suspicion is - and I admit that it is only a suspicion which
has to be inquired closely, but for now I'll hang to it as a
hypothesis, a far reaching one - that there is two trajectories in
Marx critique of political economy, and in his reconstruction of
it. The first trajectory has, or try to keep, the antitheses of
capital and labor at the center stage and account for it as the
ultimate outcome of value-relation. In this, lets call the shorten
trajectory, value-relation seems to have been worked outonly to
bring that antitheses, the opposition of capital and labor into
sharp focus. The whole analyses is being chased, is in a hurry to
blow out this opposition, conclude all its development in the birth
of a new social relation that sublate that opposition, or lets say,
all sounds like a kind of bringing out a Hegelian rabbit out of the
hat of political economy. This trajectory, as I mentioned, could be
seen also, as the one that follows the shadows of gods from
machine- those political preferences of Marx the agitator, which
are cast from off the stage of political economy, they are not
native player in it. The second trajectory, the longer one, is the
analyses of value-relation in its far reaching development, there
is a lot of oppositions, contradictions, zigzags, unending
fluctuation in search of a balance, in the developmentof this
relation, but there is no duality in it- in the sense which there
is in the making the labor and capital two opposite poles, it is
unitary movement of value and its forms. Capital is one and a
single relation, it is not something essentially different or
oppose to social labor, but a definite form of social-labor itself,
which shape and transform it as whole. Social labor here, in its
capitalistic form, move along with its value creating phase and is
transformed by it. This second trajectory subsume the first one and
do not seeks, or mange, to conclude the line of development, in any
politically desired blow up out of the opposition or not, and
consequently is not by itself tends to bring about,or give birth,
to any new social from or social relation which would be
26
-
free from mold and stamp of exchange-value. The encounter of
self-valorizing-value, capital, and value-creating-activity, bare
bone labor, no doubt is a decisive moment in the development of
value relation. But just as one of its moments, it is not the whole
story. Whatever the force of antitheses between labor and capital,
there is another tendency inherent in capital which could subsume
it and bring that antitheses to some conclusion within itself. It
transforms the labor. It is not just that, that value-relation
somehow precede and outlive that antitheses of capital and labor
which is just an episode of it. Their encounter brings a new from
of labor and new form of capital, one can say, very much merged
into each other. The opposition, antitheses is overcome in the
transforming of value relation itself. As I said, the first
trajectory is more evident in the public and published texts of the
Capital. The second is in hideous of Manuscripts, showing its
'pushed back presence' and its marks in these texts. Let me go back
to Manuscripts, to that passage which is my reference. I'll do an
attempt tobring out, or reconstruct, the longer trajectory, with
help of this passage.Here we look at capital, moving on its own
limits, in the overall trajectory of value-relation. This is a
picture of capital, not as opposition, the two poles of labor and
capital, but as a moving contradiction:
Capital itself is the moving contradiction, in that it presses
to reduce labor time to a minimum, while it posits labor time, on
the other side, as sole measure and source of wealth. Hence it
diminishes labor time in the necessary form so as to increase it in
the superfluous form; hence posits the superfluous in growing
measure as a condition- question of life and death - for the
necessary. On the one side, then, it calls to life all powers of
science and of nature, as of social combination and of social
intercourse, in order to make the creation of the wealth
independent (relatively) of the labor time employed on it. On the
other side, it wants to use labor time as the measuring rod for the
giant social forces thereby created, and to confine them within
thelimits required to maintain the already created value as value.
Forces of production and social relations - two different sides
of
27
-
the development of social individual - appear as mere means, and
are merely means for it to produce on its limited foundation. In
fact, however, they are the material conditions to blow this
foundation sky-high.p706
Marx seems is in hurry to drive this line of his thoughts to
some end. Hejust imagine that this contradicting movement, making
the creation of wealth independent from labor-time, and at the same
time relying on it as measuring rod of wealth, will blow this
foundation sky-high. Blown into what forms? Will it be a blown out
of value-relation which is encompassing all the wealth and its
creation, despite its relative independence from labor? We do not
find so much hints here, except, perhaps, the emergence of social
individual which relies on, stands onforces of production and
social relations as its two feet and is ultimatecreation of these
forces. I'll do a preliminary and speculative attempt to figure out
this social individual in the context of development of
value-relation later. For now, what we can draw from the text is
that capital, and value-relation, is eroding its reliance on
value-creating labor.
To the degree that labor time - the mere quantity of labor- is
posited by capital as the sole determinant element, to that degree
does direct labor and its quantity disappear as determinant
principle of production - of creation of use values - and is
reducedboth quantitatively, to a smaller proportion, and
qualitatively, as an, of course, indispensable but subordinate
moment, compared togeneral scientific labor, technological
application of natural sciences, on one side, and to the general
productive force arising form social combination in total
production on the other side - a combination which appears as a
natural fruit of social labor (although it is a historic product).
Capital thus works towards its own dissolution as the form
dominating production.p 700
Again, it seems a hurried ending, Capital thus works toward its
own dissolution as the form dominating production. What kind of
production this refer to? Text make it clear that it is the kind of
production based on, in my jargon, the first form, or the
value-creating labor, the production that labor as yet act as its
internal
28
-
element. Capital, dissolve itself as the from dominating
production,as far as it make possible that the labor step aside of
production process, by this development, capital is not the form
dominating production, as production itself is not anymore the
encounter of dead labor with the live labor, and the consummation
of the later by former. What happens in the meanwhile to the labor
which has been brought outfrom the inside of production process,
and what happens to the production which is not the immediate
production of material wealth, but is solely the production of
exchange-values, is the production and reproduction the social
relations and social condition of value-relation?Do capital works
to dissolve itself as the form dominating this larger and greater
sphere, the circulation, or the reproduction sphere? The text is
silent about it. But it does not exclude that the dissolution of
capital as dominating from of production, could not be accompanied,
oreven itself being a resultant of its consolidation and its
penetration as the dominant form of the outer spheres of material
production, the form dominating the production and reproduction the
social condition which engulf not only the material production of
wealth, but social-life as a whole.
The exchange of living labour for objectified labour- i.e. the
positing of social labour in the form of the contradiction of
capitaland wage labour - is the ultimate development of the
value-relation and of production resting on value. Its
presupposition is - and remains - the mass of direct labour time,
the quantity of labour employed, as the determinant factor in the
production of wealth. But to the degree that large industry
develops, the creationof real wealth comes to depend less on labour
time and on the amount of labour employed than on the power of the
agencies set in motion during labour time, whose 'powerful
effectiveness' is itself in turn out of all proportion to the
direct labour time spent on their production, but depends rather on
the general state of science and on the progress of technology, or
the application of this science to production... Real wealth
manifests itself, rather - and large industry reveals this - in the
monstrous disproportion between the labour time applied, and its
product, as well as in the
29
-
qualitative imbalance between labour, reduced to a pure
abstraction, and the power of the production process it
superintends The theft of alien labour time, on which the present
wealth is based, appears a miserable foundation in face of this new
one, created by large-scale industry itself. As soon as labour in
the direct form has ceased to be the great well-spring of
wealth,labour time ceases and must cease to be its measure, and
hence exchange value [must cease to be the measure] of use value.
The surplus labour of the mass has ceased to be the condition for
the development of general wealth, just as the non-labour of the
few, for the development of the general powers of the human head.
With that, production based on exchange value breaks down, and the
direct, material production process is stripped of the form of
penury and antithesis. The free development of individualities, and
hence not the reduction of necessary labour time so as to
positsurplus labour, but rather the general reduction of the
necessary labour of society to a minimum, which then corresponds to
the artistic, scientific etc. development of the individuals in the
time set free, and with the means created, for all of them.
The above text sums it all up. This text could be read and
interpreted in two ways. As an explanation of an inherent tendency
in capitalism to break down, as the production based on exchange
value breaks down,if we take the production in its narrower sense,
immediate production of material wealth, abstracted and separated
from the totality of social-reproduction which at the same
time,encompass the production and reproduction of social-relations
and conditions of material production too. Text somehow over looks
this totality of production. The other wayof reading the text is to
see it as an indication of the break-down of political economy as a
definite science of capitalism. The development of capitalism
reaches a point that the science which has accompanied it, could
not keep pace with it. I'm leaning toward this later reading. The
exchange of living labour for objectified labour, could not be seen
as the ultimate development of the value-relation. Though it could
be the ultimate development of the production resting on value.
These two phrase, value-relation and production
30
-
resting on value which has been brought together in a hurry are
not pointing to the same thing. Capital is self-valorizing value,
it is M-M', money begetting money, which found and did establish in
the exchange of dead and live labor its source of valorization. If
that exchange ceased to be the prevalent mode of production of
material wealth, as I mentioned in the previous comment, it does
not mean that itis the end of value relation, or capitalism as over
prevailing form of thisrelation, or any definite break-down of it.
Value relation, money and capital with it, by penetration and
reshaping all the layers of social life and social relations, have
captured and have rebuilt stronger spheres to live on it, though
all of theses spheres could be seem as if they are very precarious,
are suspended structures without foundations, or relying on a shaky
foundations- compare with the solidity of material production from
the stand point of political economy. Text could be read more as a
break-down of political economy, in so far as this science was
narrowly built on the labor theory of value. But labor as it is
being transformed under value-relation and under the stamp of
capital, could not any longer accounts for value and value relation
as it did before. Political economy come down on its foundation,
but capitalism escape, expands it foundation not on labor, but on
value-relation, which now seems to beall suspended in the air,
detached from its material base, like the world of credit. I'll
pause on the break-down of political economy later. Before that,
let me try to drive this line of speculation to another twist, to
fill the gaps which has been left empty in the text, not stopping
at those hurried end that marks the text, but driving it to its
imaginable conceptual limits. I'll attempt to outline the longer
trajectory in Marx.
2.2.8 A Longer trajectory, an Outline.
The shorter trajectory in Marx critique of political economy
finds its climax in capital encountering labor. The contradiction
of capital and wage labor, in this trajectory, -is the ultimate
development of the value-relation. It is the end of the road, or
the beginning of the end. The class struggle between capitalists
who are the personification of capital, and wage-laborers who are
equally in sociopolitical terms,
31
-
personification of living-labor, considered to be the force
which eventually will dictate and bring about that end. Capital, a
moving contradiction, tends to explode sky high - presumably in a
Proletarian Revolution. With it, the value-relation - that
underlying social relation which called forth and gave birth to
capital as its contradictory form, the form of its self-expansion,
is presumed that will be buried under the debris of its own
exploded form. Capital, will bury value-relation, too. Will capital
and value-relation follow such a fate? How, and in which
sociopolitical configurations? Any such a prophecy, will lie
outside the horizon of the political economy. The end does not come
from inner working of value-relation and capital, it comes as a
verdict of History9. It is a Historical Judgment imposed on capital
and value-relation from outside. This exterior Judgment of History
on capital and value-relation is what that gives Marx his moral and
political critique ofpolitical economy. This critique, in turn,
brings its own perspective: a Messianic one, which tends to
shortcut the movement of value-relation in its contradictory phase
in an apocalyptic eruption of class-struggles. This Historical
Judgment could find as much support - by putting class-struggles on
the edifice of political economy - as it could be rejected from
within it. The blown up stage in the Judgment perspective, from
within political economy, could be seen, not as a final, but as a
mediatory phase. The contradiction of capital and wage labor, could
be seen as the moment in which value-relation gathers strength,
counteracts and builds up to suppress and surpass precisely those
contradictions which are endangering it. If we push back the
Historical judgment and its companion, the Messianic outlook, a
longer trajectory in the Marx's reworking of
9 With History capitalized, I'd like to refer to history as it
is constructed as a teleology of social-life. A teleology
overarching social-life from a beginning to an end, and providing
it with meanings as we could find it in its elaborate and secular
from in Historical Materialism. This History could differ from
actual history. The latter is constructed as a time dimension
serving in sequencing and arranging events, possibly in a causal or
reciprocal inter connection, or merely for juxtaposing them next to
each other. Das Kapital could be characterized among other thing by
over-presence of History and the absence of history in it!
32
-
political economy began to come forth. It is as yet, somehow
suppressed. But it is there. ..
[Note:I'm editing this sub-section, as it is now, it is too log
and make things more confused than clear!..]
2.2.9 The Break Down of Political Economy?
There is an analogy from Physics. It may help to look at
political economy and its present demise in more imaginative way.
We know, physics has been a more solid science than political
economy, and it is well known too, that different sciences borrow
from, and imitate each other to the point of exhaustion! Once upon
a time physicists begun to explain every constellation in the skies
and all the distribution of planetsand stars in universe, in term
of gravitation. Gravitation promoted to thestatus of a law
governing the shape of material universe. Then came an erupting
question. What if a star, a constellation of them, collapse
underits own weight, what if forces counter-balancing the force of
gravity lose their strength, or overcome by gravity? The answer was
black-holes. Sure, three was as yet physics in black holes, and
this physics was even more in the grips of gravitation. But for
physicists all the lawsof his science were broken down. Not because
the gravity was not there,but because it was two strong which made
all hitherto assumptions of space and time out of shape and
rendered any measurement and accounting impossible. The whole trade
of physics seemed overturned at once! It seems to me that political
economy, and Marx reconstructing of it, has reached such a fate.
Marx draws this fate for political economy inmany places, among
them in the texts quoted above. But it seems to me he took the
break down of the science for that of reality.Political economy as
analyses of value-relation, reaches a phase which no longer could
count on labor-time as the measure of value. The classic labor
theory of value proved to be inadequate for explaining
33
-
fully developed value-relations. Value on the basis of
labor-time could not account for creation, circulation and
distribution of social wealth and it condition. It is not because
exchange-value has been weakened in social relations, that it is no
longer the bond which glues individuals and holds and society
together, because it has become too strong, too dominant kind of
force, a force which seems to be its own base and holding
everything else to itself. Not because it is absent, because it has
penetrated and shaped all social-life in its mold, even emotions
and affections is now subsumed in value-relation. It is the force
which defines all the labyrinth of relations, animate social body,
keeps its material forces in motion, and glues every one and
everything connected itself. To return to analogy of physics,
value-relation is not anymore in the grips of time and space of
material production, it seems that it has now created its own
social space and time, or, its ownspace-time which act as the
foundation and meteiality in all things.The way that political
economy treated the problem of prices and specially monopoly
prices, .was showing to it that that the possibility ofa break down
has been there all the way after the initial starts. In Marx
analyses, price assume to be the form of value in actual
exchange,where the trace of any real value and count of it, could
be lost or disappear. A thing could command a high price, without
containing any value as objectified labor time. The total prices
of, say a total commodities produced in a year, assume to
correspond to total value produced in that year, which is total
labor time spent in their productions. But whether the price of a
given commodities is the same as its value or not, is more a matter
of chance than the rule. For a commodity as a member of community
of commodities, to have a price correspond to its value, it has to
prove containing a socially necessary labor-time, no more, nor
less. But this socially necessary labor-time isan average, a moving
target, and a thing that is not only determined by the degree of
changing productivity of labor in its own branch of production, but
by necessity of total labor in that branch in relation to other
branches. Value as necessary labor-time is a moving reality and
Price is the actual form of exchange-value, but a the form of it
which.
34
-
As we move away from economy of subsistence, this divergence of
value and prices became more , price, the actual exchange-value, is
a claim into the pool of all values. It is like a molecule in a
chamber of gas, hit by other and hit them, A thing can have price,
without having a bit of value. The totality of prices is supposed
to be the same as the totality of , the necessary labor time for
producing them. But this necessary is never given and stand still,
and it is not only the changing of productivity that render it to
fluctuation, the total labor time spend in the total of the special
commodity too. Like a container of gas10, molecules keep themselves
in motion. We will have a self-move, self-contained and baseless
relational world, a step away from Newtonian torelativity point or
view11!There is another assumption which accompanies 'political
economy'. It is a social-configuration assumed to be in place and
to keep pace in the whole development of political economy, or to
the end of it in Marx narration. Society pictured on its wealth
producing merit and capacity and the dividing line is that of
'productive labor'. The are those who produce this wealth, and
those who accumulate it and those who consume it. Apart from
accumulators of produced wealth, which played an useful social
function, there were wealth producers themselves, 'productive
laborers', everybody else could be an unproductive burden to this
feast. Adam Smith thought that A man grows rich by employing10 It
seems to be the trick which make of economy a modern science. Find
an
analogous model, say of gas chamber, fluids in a tanks, waves in
the sea, clouds in the skies, weather patterns, and then
superimpose that model on the surface of circulation of credit,
money, and commodities; work out the observation patterns of
movement and put them in modified mathematical equations! Now you
have an objective science of economy which more than often proved
to be a good device in the hands of a Wall Street gamblers. If you
are clever and lucky the model couldbring to you a Nobel Prize too!
Poor classical political economist. They were very much mistaken
thinking they are doing a science. They were doing an social
endeavor very much biased in their subject of their inquiry. They
were as yet far away from the luxury of objective economics. Only
an over powerful capitalism and over confident a scinetific
apparatus could afford such objectivity in the sphereof economics,
or the other social sciences for that matter!
11 There has been talk about a linguistic turn in the sciences
of man. It has brought about new outlooks and new attempts to
decipher value. It worth to take a look at them.
35
-
a multitude of manufacturers: he grows poor, by maintaining a
multitude of menial servants'. He marked that The former, as it
produces a value, may be called productive; the latter,
unproductive labour. This view was not challenged by Marx, he tried
to inject a bit of dynamism into it and characterize it with its
specific social form. Marx emphasized that from the standpoint of
capitalism 'menial servant'too could be productive laborer, if he
produce surplus-value. Consider aservant which at the private table
of his master is consume the wealth ofhis master, but at the public
table of a restaurant he could bring more wealth to the master12.
From standpoint of capital the line between the productive and
unproductive was drawn between those which produce surplus-value
and those who consume it unproductively, namely not using it in a
new, or a further value creation processes. Other judgments about
the usefulness or harmfulness of activity, or the labor which was
performed doomed irrelevance. Money begetting money, it is capital
and productive or unproductive, could be judged only in this light.
It fitted into that sociology which Marx wanted to build around
politicaleconomy, or the other way maybe more true, to narrate
political economy with an eye to the limiting dictate of the
sociology. The society was divided into two classes. Capitalists,
who accumulate all theproduced wealth, and with it all the means
and condition of producing of wealth in their own hands, against
the laborers which on the other side have been reduced to a mere
wealth producing slaves deprived
12 The determinate material form of the labour, and therefore of
its product, in itselfhas nothing to do with this distinction
between productive and unproductive labour. For example, the cooks
and waiters in a public hotel are productive labourers, in so far
as their labour is transformed into capital for the proprietor of
the hotel. These same persons are unproductive labourers as menial
servants, inasmuch as I do not make capital out of their services,
but spend revenue on them.In fact, however, these same persons are
also for me, the consumer, unproductive labourers in the hotel. It
seems that Marx, despite his characterization of it as
surplus-value producing activity, is not comfortable with the
notions of 'productive'and 'unproductive' labor, or his
characterization of it at all! Consistency in holding to capital
characterization of productivity ends to considering the most
notorious activities, artful cheating, charming and enchanting,
charlatanism and crimes, among the most productive activities which
keep in motion the M-M' drive at the surface of whole society.
36
-
form the means and conditions of their social life. They are two
pillar poles of society and everybody else, at most is in and push
and put stateof living between these two poles. It is society
reconstruct, not as 'personifications' of dynamic of
value-relation, but as personification of capital and labor, which
was a transient state of that relation. As we move away from this
initial state, or as capitalism capture the production process and
gather strength, other development and changes in the class
configuration began to leave their marks. It is not only that the
labor, abstract, pure and simple one, become more and more
redundant in production and pushed out and it not the service .
Alongside it the 'capitalist in person', too, become more and more
and redundant social being. Nearly all functions of capital which
were performed by capitalist is now more and more become separated
from him, and organized and lobar exchanged for wage. What hitherto
was accounted as the exchange of revenue with services, in their
turns assume the form of capital. Following value-relation,
apparently, we move away from that kind of social configuration,
and 'sociology13 which is known as Marxian one. It
13 I do not believe that one can make any sound conciliation
between a Marxian viewand a sociology of not only of