Capital v1, ch28.The advance of capitalist production develops a working-class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature. The organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance. The constant generation of a relative surplus-population keeps the law of supply and demand of labour, and therefore keeps wages, in a rut that corresponds with the wants of capital. The dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist. Direct force, outside economic conditions, is of course still used, but only exceptionally. In the ordinary run of things, the labourer can be left to the “natural laws of production,” i.e., to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves.
September 26, 2007
… is going on in this passage?
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What worries you about the passage?
Comment by N. Pepperell — September 26, 2007 @ 7:51 am
hey NP,
I’d planned a fuller comment to follow, but I’m happy to kick it off now. In the Capital reading group someone pointed out an ambiguity or tension between “a working-class, which by education, tradition, habit, looks upon the conditions of that mode of production as self-evident laws of Nature” and “[t]he dull compulsion of economic relations completes the subjection of the labourer to the capitalist (…) the labourer can be left (…) to his dependence on capital, a dependence springing from, and guaranteed in perpetuity by, the conditions of production themselves.”
The first suggests problems of ideology and consciousness, the second suggests problems of power regardless of ideology.
There’s also a problem with “[t]he organisation of the capitalist process of production, once fully developed, breaks down all resistance.” Among other things Marx’s argument about the working day is that the changes in the working day came in response to working class resistance (I think he calls it ‘the threatening attitude of the proletariat). Unless of course capitalism wasn’t “fully developed” prior to the laws on the working day, in which case there’s still a problem with the definition of ‘resistance’ (according to at least some definitions of the word this claim is just false).
Gotta run. More later.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — September 26, 2007 @ 8:41 am
A bit late on my end, so apologies if this is quite incoherent. To start with the bit about the working day: my reading here is that Marx actually is suggesting that capitalism doesn’t “come into its own” until the workers organise themselves and the working day comes to be restricted. From memory (and please forgive that I’m doing this from memory - I should probably wait to post until I’m not too tired to look back on the text - please disregard if this seems utterly bizarre as an interpretation of the text): in Marx’s account, it is this restriction that drives the pressures to achieve relative surplus value (since absolute surplus value runs into the limit imposed by the restricted working day). The search for relative surplus value is what drives the technological treadmill that then becomes part and parcel of capitalism - where technological innovations initially provide an advantage to individual capitals, until the treadmill mechanism of Value kicks in, generalising the new level of socially average labour time and compelling a generalisation of new levels of productivity - rinse and repeat. I think it’s possible to make a case that this shift is what causes capitalism to “come into its own” - such that it is from this point that we are speaking of capitalism proper, and history comes to possess a contradictory “logic” that creates the potential for emancipation from both political and material constraints (the potential that then grounds Marx’s own critique).
So I do think there’s a strange historical irony here - of the William Morris variety: the working classes mobilise to restrict the working day. They succeed (or, in some cases, are defeated repeatedly, until we reach a point where other social groups begin having their own vested interests either in obtaining working class support, or in defusing working class unrest), but the result of this political success is not emancipation, but rather the inauguration of capitalism as we know it. Yet this isn’t entirely a bad thing, in Marx’s account: if something like communism had been successfully inaugurated at an earlier point, I think that Marx believes this would have left humanity in such thrall to material necessity, that any kind of free development would have been undermined by vulnerability to nature (Marx makes passing comments in many places about genuine vulnerability to nature manifesting itself in religious forms of thought, etc. - he seems to be after a form of emancipation based on both political and material achievements). The technological development that capitalism generates therefore builds material resources for a free society - while also constraining the realisation of such a society, as capitalism continues to be based on surplus Value - and therefore on the first expenditure of human labour in production, regardless of how high the level of productivity becomes.
On the ideology vs. power issue: I may need to hear more about what you’re thinking here to give a response that connects with what’s worrying you. My general sense is that Marx tends to tie forms of perception and thought (things that might be called “ideology” in a broad sense) with forms of practice - so that we sort of enact ways of being in the world that are simultaneously subjective and objective at the same time, but in situations where we aren’t always fully aware of what we’re enacting.
At the same time, Marx is also trying to make an argument about a particularly “impersonal” form of domination - so, when he says in the original quoted that direct force can still be used, but becomes “exceptional”, I take him to be trying to draw attention to what he regards as one of the main differences between capitalism and earlier social forms: that modes of domination come into being with capitalism that are not based solely on direct personal relations of domination between people or social groups (although such things continue to exist, and Marx will also analyse them - the issue here is what he regards as historically distinctive or definitive of capitalism); instead, capitalism’s most definitive mode of domination in instead something like the domination of individuals and groups by the social totality - this is what the notion of Value, measured by “socially average labour time”, is trying to express. Value is coercive on capitalists and labourers alike - which isn’t to say that these two social groups suffer to equivalent degrees under capitalism: one group clearly reaps greater benefits and is significantly favoured by the system of distribution. But the concept of Value is trying to capture the strange dynamism of the society - the ongoing tendency to rip apart and reconfigure social institutions, to develop and generalise new technologies and new forms of labour, etc. Capitalists pursuing personal gain in the form of profit aren’t intending to generate such dynamics - let alone to be coerced by them. Marx spares them no tears, but at the same time doesn’t want to lose sight of the dimensions of the social context that won’t come clearly into view when looking at personal relations of domination between labourers and capitalists. The story, instead, is of dependence on capital - on a particular dynamic social system that measures social actors against the coercive standard of a social average.
Apologies if this is completely beside the point - I’m both tired and insomniac at the moment, which isn’t the best recipe for coherence. And I should stress that I’m writing this off the top of my head, without rechecking the passage you’re citing - and may be offering a reading of Marx to which you wouldn’t be sympathetic… I’m a bit worried that this response will be a bit inadequate to the conversation you’re hoping to have - some sleep might help… Apologies for cluttering your site when I’m in zombie-mode…
Take care…
Comment by N. Pepperell — September 26, 2007 @ 9:59 am
hey NP,
No apologies necessary, thanks for the reply and I hope the insomnia abates. Not sleeping sucks.
On the force vs ideology thing, I’m not trying to posit a non-ideological force or anything like that, but I think this points to two sorts of responses to Marx, an ideology-critique version and a labor history version (put crudely). The former is about the ways that ideas, modes of perception, etc (looking-upon and “education, tradition, habit”) reinforce and reproduce the capital relation, in individual heads and in (for lack of a better term, superstructural) institutions. The second is about the ways that economic and extra-economic force are deployed - strikes broken by inability to last without wages etc. There doesn’t have to be an either/or here, but in my experience the latter is often over-emphasized (at least in the circles I’ve been around). There’s also an area of overlap between the two, which is looking at the culture (for lack of a better term) involved in various forms of resistance by workers, the ways that workers didn’t and don’t look at capitalism as natural, etc.
On the rest, I think you’re giving a sound reading of Marx, one that I think he intended for at least much of his career (I’m attached to suggestions that he may have taken some of this back, not attached in a way that does any intellectual work, I just have an affection for Marx and don’t like it when he does things I don’t like). I think he’s wrong about that stuff though.
I find the “fully developed capitalism” or capitalism that has come into its own to be problematic and not very productive. Clearly there are distinctions worth making within the larger category “capitalism”, but I don’t find this particular set of distinctions useful. I’m also not convinced by the implied periodization of absolute and relative surplus value (this connects to dissatisfaction I have w/ periodization around formal vs real subsumption). I think it’s just as plausible that these things emerge in tandem - as soon as the worker is working for wages there’s an incentive for capitalist to not only increase labor time but increase the rate of production. (Also, with regard to unwaged labor like housework etc, lengthened work hours in the shop can cause a speed up in work done off the clock, such that taking into account unwaged labors questions this periodization as well.)
With regard to liberation from material limits, I’m unsympathetic. I think that that borders on a category mistake between genuine (though still historical) economic or existential necessity - “we simply don’t have enough food”, “we don’t know how to cure this disease” etc - and social relations of force and inequality which manifest (or are presented/obfuscated) as necessity. That is, there’s a really important difference in the meaning of freedom in “free from material necessity” as in adequate food etc vs “free from social constraint” as in the compulsion to sell labor power etc.
To put this another way, Marx’s argument that you lay out I think amounts to the following:
1. Human history as far as we know up till now has involved labor surplus to existing requirements.
2. This surplus labor (and the resulting products) have been distributed unequally and the decisions on this distribution have been made in a non-democratic or coercive fashion.
3. The above two points have resulted in positive developments in human society (or, during human history up until now we have seen positive developments connected to points one and two - society hasn’t been stagnant or just been bad).
4. Point three could only come about or come about to the degree that it has as a result of point two, such that the absence of point two at any prior historical time would have been worse than the presence of point two.
I agree with 1-3 and disagree with 4. I see no reason why a free society (in the political sense) which developed at any prior point in history would not be capable of eventually achieving similar gains to those of unfree societies. I realize that this didn’t happen, but Marx as you present him (which I think is a fair presentation) doesn’t seem to simply say “didn’t” but “couldn’t have”.
Make sense?
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — September 26, 2007 @ 11:32 am
Hey Nate, Pepperell,
I was just having a discussion over at readingthemaps.blogspot.com about this last issue, about the progressive dimension of capitalism. I think you present the issue well… Counterfactuals are pretty tricky for historical materialism but I don’t think M (& E) meant to use capitalism’s prior development of the forces of production as an argument that some egalitarian alternative couldn’t have done it as well, had it been on the cards. It was an argument that capitalism did it better than feudalism.
I think the reason capitalism has been so materially productive, though, is less to do with unequal _distribution_ as such and more to do with how labourers are forced to work hard and productively and capitalists are forced by competition to innovate, accumulate and increase labour productivity. Would a socialist society worth living in be able to exert these kinds of forces? I think this is a trickier question, and we’re lucky to be living a long way further down the track when increased productivity is hardly one of humanity’s greatest challenges.
Comment by Mike Beggs — September 26, 2007 @ 7:41 pm
Hey Nate - Sorry about that: I’m trying to wrestle with working out what Marx was trying to do in certain particularly annoying sections of Capital at the moment, which tends to throw me into pedantic-interpretive mode - trying to figure out what Marx was trying to do, rather than talking about whether I like what he was trying to do - I was probably responding at cross-purposes to the discussion you were trying to have…
On the material necessity issue: I agree with you on the issue of whether we needed to “wait” for capitalism to solve our material problems before trying anything meaningful politically. On this end of history, of course, it’s probably a bit easier to see how this sort of notion can facilitate the sort of May ‘68 problem, where party leadership subverts mass political action because it’s convinced itself that the times aren’t ripe… ;-P I tend to see these sorts of gestures in Marx’s work as indications that he’s still sort of trying to out-clever Hegel in places in Capital - the tacit notion of “necessity” here strikes me as somewhat similar to what Hegel will do in places, as though we “had” to go through certain things to open up the possibilities available to us now. On one level, of course, this kind of thing is always trivially true: we’re here because we’re here - we face our current problems because those problems were opened up, and not resolved, in earlier periods, etc. But to go beyond this and suggest that there might have been some strong “necessity” in those earlier historical moments steps into territory that, to me, seems a bit… mystical…
It’s possible that all Marx is trying to do here is nod at Hegel - in other words, it’s possible that he might not “believe” in this kind of “necessity”, but is trying instead to hint at why Hegel might have found such a narrative plausible. Certainly in other places Marx is quite clear about the retrospective and reconstructive character of his account - which would be inconsistent with a strong notion of historical necessity in the developments leading up to capitalism.
Marx does seem to appeal in a number of places to the notion that vulnerability to nature, which Marx associates with a low level of technological development, renders “rational” a sort of religious worship of nature (Adorno picks up this theme, and “Freudianises” it, making far more of it, I think, than Marx himself did…). So I think there’s an element of Marx thinking that meaningful freedom emerges from the development of technology (as a necessary, though not sufficient, development). So maybe this is part of what lies behind his occasional suggestions that we “needed” capitalism to take place…
On the historical periodisation issue: I’m not happy with it either, almost I’m not completely sure whether it’s for the same reason? (It might be - just not familiar enough with how you think about the issue.) Marx offers a theory of capitalism as a social form that generates a particular “logic” of historical development - and that therefore opens up the possibility for a particular kind of reflexive theory, precisely because there are certain systematic tendencies or trends that can actually be theorised. (I may perceive this “logic” a bit differently from the way Marx does - I’m not completely sure, to be honest - but I see Marx as trying to make this kind of argument.) I don’t personally think this kind of analysis can be unfolded until something like “relative surplus value” becomes available as an option - and, as you’ve said, I can’t see why this wouldn’t be an option, as soon as you have wage labour (and there are very early forms of self-organisation of wage labour, so I don’t see an enormous historical lag between the advent of wage labour, and these kinds of contestations). The sorts of conflicts over the working day that figure in Capital are taking place in a context that has already become technologically dynamic - perhaps the argument is more that the “mainstreaming” of such conflicts and the development of a particular understanding of the role of the state is key in intensifying the rate of technological dynamism: I want to re-read these sections to work some of this out…
At any rate, to me, we’re not really talking about “capitalism”, until we’re talking about a situation in which both absolute and relative surplus value might potentially be in play. I kind of regard the absolute/relative distinction as a conceptual one (which also has some practical political implications in any given capitalist present), but I don’t really find it that useful to think in terms of an overarching historical shift from absolute to relative surplus value extraction. (And I probably share your irritation with the formal/real subsumption discussion - although, again, it may not be for the same reason: I tend to get irritated with repeated declarations that labour has finally been “really subsumed”, when what is being described is usually more the latest qualitative transformation in technological or organisational arrangements for work… Apologies if this doesn’t make any sense…) I’m always a bit cautious with Marx about whether he thinks he really is describing historical shifts - there’s a lot of meta-commentary going on in the text. But, to the extent that he seems to be, I would find it questionable…
On the ideology issue: this is interesting and (for once!) I’d like to hear a bit more about what you’re thinking here, before barging in. If I’m hearing you correctly, I think some of my work touches on this, and it would be something I’m interested in hearing more about - but I don’t want to plunge off the deep end into my own questions, before hearing more what you’re thinking.
Sorry for droning on… I’m working back through a lot of Marx at the moment, and I’ve already bored everyone I know in person - now it’s evidently your turn! ;-P
Comment by N. Pepperell — September 26, 2007 @ 8:13 pm
Hey N Pepperell,
Actually your comments are really interesting, I like your interpretation.
I would defend some notion of historical necessity as crucial to a materialist view of the world. It’s easy to criticise crude ideas about stages, which are bad generalisations and a major overreach of theory. But voluntarism is also a mistake, the idea that if only people had the right ideas and acted in the right way at some point in time we could have had a revolution. It leads to other political mistakes.
I don’t think it’s mystical to argue that possibilities for change are limited by the social circumstances of a time. Not least because those circumstances shape how people view society and their place within it, which seems to be what Marx is saying in the passage above.
Comment by Mike Beggs — September 26, 2007 @ 8:35 pm
Sorry - I should have been clearer. I don’t think it’s mystical to argue that possibilities for change are limited by social circumstances: that kind of general claim doesn’t worry me. What I take to be mystical is any sort of claim that “History” has some sort of theorisable developmental dynamic, whether in the form of a claim that something like “us” was bound to happen in some teleological sense, or in the form of a claim that all forms of human society generate internal dynamics that point systematically toward those societies being “overcome” in some kind of theorisable way (I’m not objecting to the notion that we could look back retrospectively and piece together how societies collapsed, or developed into something else, etc. - just to conceptions of history that would suggest that it would have been possible to theorise such things internally from within all societies at the time).
I take Marx to be arguing that capitalism actually does generate a theorisable historical dynamic - so that something like “immanent critical theory” becomes possible, because the society has strange, systematic, “lawlike” characteristics. But I take this argument, by Capital, to be largely an argument about capitalism being unusual in this respect - and therefore enabling unusual forms of theory.
I need to qualify the hell out of what I’ve just written here - as written, it sounds like a stronger claim than I want to make. My laptop battery is about to die, though, so I’ll just post it as is, and let you criticise it… ;-P I’ll come back later, if the conversation is still going, to clarify what I mean…
Sorry to post on the run like this…
Comment by N. Pepperell — September 26, 2007 @ 8:44 pm
NP, it’s funny for me of all people to say this (a friend told me recently after a big meeting that every time I spoke from the floor I apologize, apologized again, then made my point), but really, no apologies necessary! There’s little I like better than discussing Marx. My life’s gotten really busy recently and now it’s late (well, 8:45pm) here and I’m totally knackered (started going to the gym again and got my bike fixed for the first time in 2 years, so it was Monday gym and bike home, Tuesday bike to campus then forget my bike outside my favorite bar, and today gym and bike home, my legs are like jelly) so I’m going to have to respond more later when I get time, but please, talk all you like about Marx. Your comments are interesting and I like them. Don’t hold back. When I said “I’d planned a fuller comment to follow” I wasn’t saying “ah crap NP you’re making me talk when I don’t want to” so much as saying “well, I was gonna wait till I had more time but since you asked I’ll write right now, risking being sloppier in order to start this conversation sooner.” More soon. And remind me to tell you about one of my students worry about whether or not I was a feminist.
Mike, real quick - I disagree completely re: the importance of historical necessity. Obviously we need some sort of common sense reasoning so as to identify courses of action and deliberate about strategy, but that’s not historical necessity. I think this sort of common sense - by which I mean “theoretically minimalist” or “not necessarily very theoretically interesting” - reasoning is enough to eliminate mistaken voluntarism, I don’t think we need any sort of idea of necessity to eliminate that sort of problem. I’ll get back to you on necessity soon-ish, but as a parting shot or kick off - there’s a tremendous difference between retroactive positing of historical necessity and positing such in and about the present. The former is also wrong in my view (I don’t see what’s gained by adding “and it had to be the case” to the proposition “X happened”) but the second is much more problematic.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — September 26, 2007 @ 8:54 pm
NP,
I think you’re right that Marx is trying to do this in Capital. He argues that capitalism _in particular_ generates abstract historical forces that are abstract in reality and not just in theory, in a way that no previous social formation did. This is because of the price and market mechanism and the forces of competition.
This is why Marx found the political economists so insightful and spent so much of his life studying them and developing his own version. His critique of political economy was essentially that most political economists did not see the social conditions that made capitalism historically specific, not that they were wrong to seek economic laws, however much he also criticised their specific economic theories.
You’re right that sometimes he is teleological about it and I agree this is a weakness and a mistake. Economists have always been bad at predicting the long run and Marx is no exception.
Comment by Mike Beggs — September 26, 2007 @ 9:12 pm
Nate,
I doubt we disagree in practice… ‘Historical necessity’ has no place in actual organising or activism because no-one can pretend to be in a position to have a good vantage point for seeing where they are in history. Strategy is a strange beast and the proof of historical necessity is always in the pudding (sorry to mix metaphors, I’m also typing in a rush). The example someone used above of May ‘68 does seem to be an example of where things really could have turned out differently if certain groups had not been so timid or blinkered by ‘historical necessity’.
Comment by Mike Beggs — September 26, 2007 @ 9:16 pm
Note to self - compare section 8 of Capital v1 w/ remarks in the beginning of the 18th Brumaire.
Comment by Nate — September 27, 2007 @ 11:00 pm
Very interesting discussion.
Nate you write:
” I see no reason why a free society (in the political sense) which developed at any prior point in history would not be capable of eventually achieving similar gains to those of unfree societies. I realize that this didn’t happen, but Marx as you present him (which I think is a fair presentation) doesn’t seem to simply say “didn’t” but “couldn’t have”.”
For me this has always been an intriguing and troubling counterfactual. It seems to me compelling enough as a gesture to be worth establishing the reasonability of. But it also seems to me there are very many good reasons why “a free society (in a political sense)…would not be capable of eventually achieving similar gains to those of unfree societies.” (The immense human suffering required to exploit minerals and fossil fuels initially, for example, without which all the rest is strictly physically impossible). So I was wondering sort of what persuades you this alternative case was really possible, or if it is more of a principle to consider it so.
Comment by chabert — September 28, 2007 @ 1:57 am
ciao Colonel,
You’re going to make me miss my bus! My actual motivation on this question is because of vague misgivings over vague applications of the idea during the capitalist era - I’ve not devoted a ton of time to this so I don’t have a lot of documentation.
It’s easy to think of peasants and underdeveloped places as being behind the times, so to speak. Insofar as one thinks that, one could think that that those people and places need to catch up to the present before they can go another direction. I read a book of biographical essays on people who were around during the Spanish civil war, one of whom was heavily involved in the Spanish socialist party. He believed and argued strongly that Spain couldn’t have a proletarian and peasant revolution because it hadn’t had a proper bourgeois revolution yet and one can’t skip stages of history. That didn’t have particularly positive results.
This is basically the same thing that makes me interested in Marx’s late comments on Russia (here - http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2006/12/19/was-marxs-russian-road/)
All of that said, I recognize that dire circumstances make dire actions more likely or understandable. But I don’t think it’s guaranteed that dire actions will result or that their mode is determined by the dire circumstances (I’ve just started Thompson’s moral economy essay, I think his remarks on the term ‘riot’ are relevant, I’ll post a bit about that after I finish the essay).
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — September 28, 2007 @ 7:22 am