Does it happen in the base or superstructure? Some notes pending a review of some Althusser stuff.
All of the surplus value that capital appropriates is unwaged. Some of this is uncompensated time in recognized workplaces, where workers produce a value for the capitalist greater than the value of the wages the capitalist pays. Some of this is uncompensated time in other sites which are not recognized as workplaces but which are still required for or imposed by the function of different capitals. For example, housework, commute time, getting dressed in the morning, training and drug testing in the workplace, as well as other activities which maintain existing labor power at some level of quality wanted by the capitalists. In addition to ongoing forms like these there are also longer stretches of time spent which are later appropriated all at once or in lump sums by capitalists when new workers or workers who have been out of circulation enter the labor market - many years uncompensated in schools, many years spent raising children who later enter the market as sellers of their hides as labor power, etc. This latter is the production of new labor power in order to reproduce capitalist ability to purchase wanted labor power. Generally these functions overlap and are done by the same people (women) in homes but they are logically and practically differentiable (for instance, public health programs manage the long term health of populations of sellers of labor power while emergency rooms more manage the short term health of individuals).
Gendered inequalities in the distribution of varieties of this labor, both
unremunated labors at home an gendered inequalities in money wages, serve the short term interest of those members of the working class who get the better deal (men who get out of doing housework and so forth and generally receive higher wages) and the longterm interests of the capitalist class because divisions in the working class help the ruling class stay in power. In these cases, one can say that there is an exchange made between a lower sector of the working class and capitalism, with a higher sector of the working class serving as the mediator and getting some kind of cut (just like low level politicians and bureaucrats in business unions get a cut for fulfilling a mediating role). This is particularly the case with unwaged labors like housework, but is also the case when privileged sectors of the working class defend inequalities and hierarchies from which they (we?) profit.
Despite Althusser’s laudable insistence on the need to attend to reproduction, he is problematic as a source for addressing these important issues. Althusser emphasizes the functions of the school and the family as ISAs and as part of the superstructure. While ideology and the superstructure and so forth is important, the most important aspect of these sites is precisely not any
superstructural role. They are part of the economic base, sites where labor
takes place without full remuneration and thus sites of the production of
surplus value. These are susidiary or secondary parts of the base - just as
factories which manufacture items like candy corn are secondary when compared to, say, oil rigs, refineries, and ports - so it’s much harder for power to be exercised in these sites compared to many others, but that subsidiary
position in terms of power does not mean that these sites are not in the
base. It also seems to me that if Althusser were to concede that these sites
are sites of surplus value production and thus of labor then his base/superstructure topography would have to be drastically revised.
Related to some of this this, an article about Venezuela. The Venezuelan constitution holds that housework is productive work, such that housewives should be paid for it.
http://www.metamute.org/en/Wages-for-Anyone-Is-Bad-for-Business
The article is in part an interview about Venezuela with Selma James, who has
done theoretical and organizational work around traditionally feminine
unwaged labor.
Yes, there is this difference in emphasize. But if I should try to say something in defence of Althusser it would be, that even if we admit that the household is not a site external to the production process, it would not necessearly mean that one could not distinguish different levels of determination within the household, just as, the other way around, I don’t think Althusser would object to distinguishing interpelating apparatuses within conventional, waged, commodity-producing workplaces. The spaceal dimension of the base-superstructure topology is metaphore, it is not necessearly a matter of distinction in place, or even a distinction of empirical practices, but of different determinations of these practices.
Comment by erik — October 17, 2006 @ 10:41 am
hi Erik,
I agree completely that there are different determinations within the home and within production. While a great deal of life is bound up with the production and accumulation of capital, there are important differences in how different moments are involved. I do think superstructural placement is problematic, though. The term superstructure only has meaning as distinct from the base where production occurs. Thus while Althusser would probably agree with you that interpellation goes on in waged workplaces, I don’t know that he would agree that being interpellated is itself something of a form of labor (ie, students perform an unwaged form of labor with the expectation of being paid at the end in one lump sum either in direct monetary means or in nonmonetary means such as better conditions, more respect, etc). What you’re suggesting is more acceptable to me - that for every moment or site in the base there is, so to speak, a superstructural moment or site. The family and the school are not superstructural, though. They’re part of the base and have their own superstructural components (interpelating apparatuses, as you call them). They may well act upon other sites within the base (as the media does - Virno remarks somewhere that if one looks at immaterial labor then one should consider the spectacle as the industry that produces the means of production). But many sites within the base act upon each other by either supplying raw material to be worked on or by working on the product of another site and thus providing need for that product. Not to mention the effects of work stoppages etc.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 17, 2006 @ 2:48 pm
I want to pick up another thread in your argument. If Althusser argued that institutions like school and family not are external to the capitalist mode of production, but are determined by it in the last instance by way of establishing their purposiveness (which is the reproduction of this mode of production), isn’t this to say that the practices that occurs in these institutions are “necesseary” for the production of surplus value, that they are constituted as moements within capitalism in a way that any politics that would want to engage with the conditions of these preactices would have to be directed in one way or another at the capitalist mode of production? What is it that is gained by going from this position to the position that they are not only necesseary for the production of surplus-value, they are themselves productive of surplus value? Is it that it would be easier to demand a wage for these practices if it could be stated that they are in fact constitutive of value? Or is it that the people who perform these practices more easily would realise that they _could_ demand a wage if they realised that they are constitutive of value? Or something else?
Sometimes it is suggested that value-production is a condition for revolutionary subjectivity. Something I’ve seen suggested by both people who hold on to the concept if improductive labour, and people who refute it. Sometimes it even seems that the idea of this connection is the very reason to get rid of it.
I raise this question because I reasontly read Reading Capital Politically by Harry Cleaver. I have read the book before many years ago, and then I understood Cleaver to be arguing like you are arguing above, that unwaged domestic labour is productive for capital in that it is creative of value. Reading the book again I realise that this is not what he is arguing. Unwaged domestic labour is productive for capital in that it _decreases_ the value of labour-power, and thereby changing the ratio between necesseary labour and surplus labour. Cleaver is not arguing that unwaged domestic labour is part of the substance of value. Look, for instance, how he illustrate the circuit of the reproduction of labour-power on page 123 in the AK-press edition.
Reading Women and the Subversion of the Community again I’m not sure if James and Dalla Costa argue that unwaged domestic labour produces surplus-value in this indirect sense of changing the rate between necesseary and surplus labour, or that they increase the total amount of value. Their focus seem to be that the wage command a larger amount of labor than what appear in factory bargaining, which is compatible with both approaches, but since they focus on the wage and not the value of the commodity from whos exchange the capitalist gains his profit, perhaps this can be taken as an indication that they are close to Cleavers approach (or he to theirs).
The question, though, is: does it matter from a political point of view?
Comment by erik — October 17, 2006 @ 9:21 pm
hi Erik,
Really good points and questions. I don’t have a satisfying response. Basically it just makes sense to me that various unwaged labors are part of surplus value production. Here’s my reasoning. Surplus value is not a substance but a social process. One which does occur successfully at a general social level insofar as capitalism continues but which in many particular instances fails to occur in that surplus value isn’t realized. For instance, people who make shoes which get put on a ship which then sinks. Or people who make CDs which don’t sell because the market changes (the second album by many one hit wonders). To my mind, if surplus value is produced this way then it means that surplus value is not produced at just one site or type of site, but it produced in or by an ensemble. Dockworkers are key part of that ensemble in many instances. Sites like schools and homes (unwaged labor) part of that too, and I don’t understand how they can be differentiated meaningfully. I may be wrong on all this, I’m willing to have my mind changed. All of this also sits with a sort of gut level impulse I have to say that these others sites are also sites of exploitation, which may be moralistic of me.
As for what it matters, I’m not entirely sure. I’m increasingly convinced, in a way I haven’t been before, of the political primacy of waged labor. Not that other sites aren’t important or that other struggles are invalid, but I don’t understand how power could be adequately exercised against capital in those other sites - despite their participation in surplus value production. Taking this line of argument one step further, I’m also becoming more convinced of the strategic primacy of some sectors of waged labor over others. (None of this should, however, translate into primacy in terms of decision-making power within organizations or movements.)
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 18, 2006 @ 2:46 pm