Capital - Chapter 1 - Reduction of Complex to Simple Labour

[phildwyer]

I honestly have no idea where you are going with this. Can you lay out your theory in one post, please?

If I could do that, amigo, I would be ruling the world by now.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

If I could do that, amigo, I would be ruling the world by now.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

Well that's that sorted then.

 

[phildwyer]

Oh alright then. For one thing, if financial value is life in alienated form, and if life is good, then financial value must be evil.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Why would life be good? Life just is, isn't it?

 

[phildwyer]

Why would life be good? Life just is, isn't it?

Do you want to die?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Do you want to die?

No. But some people do, and there is no objective way to judge that I am right and they are wrong.

 

[phildwyer]

No. But some people do, and there is no objective way to judge that I am right and they are wrong.

I think that existence is inherently better than non-existence.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

I'm staying out of this one.

 

[Santino]

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I think that existence is inherently better than non-existence.

I used to think that when I was a kid. That I would rather be alive and in pain than dead. That any kind of life had to be better than death.

'Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on...'

I don't think that any more.

 

[phildwyer]

The basic point, of this part of my argument anyway, is that once we recognize that the worker sells his life, rather than his labor, we see that this conversation about labor-power and value is part of a much longer conversation, reaching back to the beginnings of philosophy, about the nature of human life and its relation with death.

But if we don't make this breakthrough and remain under the impression that the conversation is about wages, productivity and so on, it becomes a merely economic debate and its metaphysical implications are obscured.

Marx is then reduced to some kind of trades-union official with a weekend interest in reading Voltaire, and the struggle to liberate mankind from capital degenerates into bickering over an extra 10-minutes' tea-break on Wednesday afternoons.

 

[phildwyer]

As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.

You 're just jealous cos you haven't spent your life discovering the Key to all Philosophy, but instead have just wasted your time posting petty snipes on an obscure south London bulletin board.

 

[phildwyer]

You 're just jealous cos you haven't spent your life discovering the Key to all Philosophy, but instead have just wasted your time posting petty snipes on an obscure south London bulletin board.

Speaking of which, all I'm really doing is pointing to the most ancient of all saws regarding financial value and observing that they are actually true.

You know, stuff about money being unable to reproduce (Aristotle), love of money being the root of all evil (Paul), it being impossible to serve both God and money (Jesus), money's ability to create an entirely illusory "second nature," and to convince us that it is in fact the authentic, first nature (Plato).

These are not exactly what you'd call original ideas are they? Marx did little more than demonstrate their application in C19th Europe.

And yet they have been forgotten, or dismissed, or at least the detailed, precise manner in which they are true has been missed even by those who purport to believe in them.

If their truth can be demonstrated today, the defenders of capital will be deprived of their threadbare ideological rationalizations and forced to confront the world as the naked embodiments of metaphysical evil that they truly are.

 

[eoin_k]

What is sold by the worker, and alienated as financial value, is not labor but life itself.

One reason why I think the point I was trying to explore regarding Engel's note might be interesting is that it covers the same territory. If we follow the distinction in Engel's note between work and labour, we can read Marx as saying work is an essential aspect of human nature since we are defined by our capacity and need to creatively transform our environment irrespective of what sort of society we live in. Work is intimately linked to human life itself. The problem with capitalism is then that work is reduced to labour i.e. an exploitative and alienated process. Which implies the need for a struggle which isn't just about winning some time back of the bosses, but is rather about transforming work into a process which isn't alienated by commodification.

In terms of the quantitative/qualitative issue. I don't want to over egg my point as I am not sure what it is myself. Perhaps I am just failing to follow Marx's argument. When other people restate it, it seems clear enough, but in the text it seems to get blurred:

But these two qualitatively equated commodities do not play the same part. It is only the value of the linen that is expressed. And how? By being related to the coat as its ’equivalent’, or ‘the thing exchangeable’ with it. In this relationship the coat counts as the form of the existence of value, as the material embodiment of value, for only as such is it the same as the linen. On the other hand, the linen’s own existence as value come into view or receives an independent expression, for it is only as value that it can be related to the coat as being equal in value to it, or exchangeable with it.”

For example, I don't understand how a passage like this fits with Marx's rigid distinction between the two modes of analysis. I'm going to leave it there as I'm not sure how fruitful this is.

 

[revol68]

One reason why I think the point I was trying to explore regarding Engel's note might be interesting is that it covers the same territory. If we follow the distinction in Engel's note between work and labour, we can read Marx as saying work is an essential aspect of human nature since we are defined by our capacity and need to creatively transform our environment irrespective of what sort of society we live in. Work is intimately linked to human life itself. The problem with capitalism is then that work is reduced to labour i.e. an exploitative and alienated process. Which implies the need for a struggle which isn't just about winning some time back of the bosses, but is rather about transforming work into a process which isn't alienated by commodification.

In terms of the quantitative/qualitative issue. I don't want to over egg my point as I am not sure what it is myself. Perhaps I am just failing to follow Marx's argument. When other people restate it, it seems clear enough, but in the text it seems to get blurred:



For example, I don't understand how a passage like this fits with Marx's rigid distinction between the two modes of analysis. I'm going to leave it there as I'm not sure how fruitful this is.

regarding work and labour, you've basically got it, though you need to reverse the terms I think, labour is an essential, work is just one historical form of labour.

The problem with capitalism is then that work is reduced to labour i.e. an exploitative and alienated process. Which implies the need for a struggle which isn't just about winning some time back of the bosses, but is rather about transforming work into a process which isn't alienated by commodification.

the problem isn't simply one of fighting over surplus value, though of course that's a central aspect of class struggle, but rather fighting to abolish value itself.

 

[love detective]

yeah i think it's engel's footnote that is the cause of the confusion there as it pretty much contradicts how marx actually uses the term labour (or labour process) which is just in a general & universal sense and not specific to any specific mode of production, i.e. in the way it's talked about in the first section of chapter 7. As distinct to wage-labour (prefer that phrase to revol's 'work' - as there's scope for confusion as 'work' is more likely to be understood as the generic/universal form of labour) which is the specific form of alienated labour under capitalism

just terminology really though - the general distinction is the correct one between the general and specific forms

 

[eoin_k]

I think there might be some substance to my point and that my frustration could be caused by bad translation. From what I can see, the distinction is easier to draw in English than in other European languages. I'm not aware that the work/labour distinction is as clear in German where 'arbeit' or words derived from 'arbeit' seem to be used to describe both labour and work. Since people have gone on to develop Marx's analysis in English on the basis of the translation I am pissing in the wind and I realise it probably doesn't matter...