I’ve blogged about this a fair bit here and there, exclusively or almost exclusively in relation to Antonio Negri’s work, maybe also the work of some other recent Italian writers. I’ve got some other things I need to get to (grading, sleeping, watching Scrubs) so I’m going to be a bit lazy. At some point I’d like to write something proper about this, review the literature then show up the problems on it. For now, just a blog post and a start.
Here’s most of the definition of real subsumption that I wrote for the glossary of Constituent Imagination (via).
Marx defined real subsumption of labor in the “Results of the Immediate Process of Production,” the so-called unpublished sixth chapter of Capital Volume One (a translation here). Real subsumption is defined in contrast to formal subsumption of labor. Formal subsumption occurs when capitalists take command of labor processes that originate outside of or prior to the capital relation via the imposition of the wage. In real subsumption the labor process is internally reorganized to meet the dictates of capital. An example of these processes would be weaving by hand which comes to be labor performed for a wage (formal subsumption) and which then comes to be performed via machine (real subsumption). Real subsumption in this sense is a process or technique that occurs at different points throughout the history of capitalism. For some thinkers, such as Antonio Negri, real subsumption of labor is transfigured into real subsumption of society such that all of society becomes a moment of capitalist production. In this version of real subsumption is an epoch, a stage of capitalism within a historical periodization, analogous to postmodernity.
Like I said, being a bit lazy, so not looking up any references to where this particular thing is done, but I know I’ve seen it…. I’ve seen folk talk about “real subsumption of society” as something Marx talked about. I don’t know that he did, at least not in explicit terms and in a way where he recognized his object as real subsumption of society. So I’m unconvinced on Marxological grounds. I don’t know if Negri himself is so bad on this, I think he may imply and allude more than actually say “Marx said…” or “Marx characterized…” but I know I’ve been in conversations and read things where people say that. Like I said, I don’t think that’s correct, I think it’s a distortion of Marx.
In the so-called unpublished sixth chapter of v1 of Capital Marx doesn’t say “subsumption of society.” He says “subsumption of labor.” (Likewise in the published sections of v1, which as far as I’m concerned should get priority over the unpublished works; in the published parts Marx refers to real subordination - I’m pretty sure I’ve checked on this and found that the word in German is the same, will look up the references etc another time).) It’s reasonably clear that Marx is not talking here about all of society or any given society. Rather he’s talking about the level of individual enterprises or industries, and at most all of capitalist social relations rather than all of society. It’s also very, very clear that he doesn’t mean this as an epoch.
For instance:
Just as the production of absolute surplus value can be regarded as the material expression of the formal subsumption of labour under capital, so the production of relative surplus value can be regarded as that of the real subsumption of labour under capital (….) two separate forms of the subsumption of labour under capital, or two separate forms of capitalist production, correspond to the two forms of surplus value. The first form of production always constitutes the predecessor of the second, although the second, which is the further developed form, can in turn form the basis for the introduction of the first in new branches of production.
That is to say, these terms are bounded spatially (or in terms of social space anyway) - they apply to some branches of production, some sites, not all of society. And while formal subsumption precedes real subsumption, real subsumption can be the cause of formal subsumption in new locations. Not epochs.
All of this was sparked by the following quote from Christopher Tomlins’ book The State And The Unions. Tomlins writes about a railway strike in the 1890s that
“the strike was fought over who should organize and control the work process. In this regard, the shop craft strike symbolized the themes of the entire labor-management confrontation. As Bryan Palmer and many others have shown, during the latter part of the nineteenth century a “culture of control” built around craft traditions and, increasingly, unions and union rules, had spread through many industries regulating the performance of work. It was this culture which employers had to confront if there were to secure control at the point of production for themselves.” (16-17)
What Tomlins is talking about here is tied to part of what Marx is on about with regard to formal and real subsumption, and part of what Negri and others are on about with those words (though I think their ideas differ from Marx’s). I’m pretty early in the book so I don’t know all the details but I expect that Tomlins will argue something about employers winning and the role of the Wagner Act. Which is to say, the employers more or less won. I think in this particular strike and over all. I wouldn’t say that real subsumption of society happened, but in the terms used in this post, real subsumption happened. And it happened well before Negri’s placement in his periodization. (I’ve already argued to the point of tedium that a lot of the analytical categories and the aspects of society highlighted in Negri’s work and related work don’t actually have the historical specificity that they’re alleged to have - they don’t just apply to the recent so-called Postfordist past. Along similar lines but maybe not quite as dull, I’d bet that a lot of the characterizations used in making claims about so-called real subsumption of society would fit the New Deal, that’s one for another day.)
One other thing: this is arguably real subsumption. But it’s not preceded by formal subsumption. (Of course all of this depends on where we set the parameters.) The railways were capitalist enterprises from the outset. There wasn’t a pre-capitalist railway which was taken over - formally subsumed - and remade - really subsumed. There was a capitalist railway which was restructured to give more control to employers. This is a remaking which doesn’t follow the formal/real distinction in one sense. In another sense it does, if that distinction is redone as a matter of power and control, and the temporal claims are mostly thrown out.
As much as this subsumption is a possibility, it would still not have happened in Marx’ time. How would he have talked about it? Like finance capital. Any discussion would have been speculative, and speculation is not his style.
Comment by Chuckie K — December 19, 2008 @ 4:15 pm
hey Chuckie,
what’s the “this” refer to? The pronoun makes your comment a bit ambiguous.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — December 19, 2008 @ 4:21 pm
Hey Nate,
Thanks for these reflections. I’m always excited to read your thoughts on Marx.
As I understand it, there’s a very specific historical referent for Marx’s distinction in the Appendix to Capital I. Formal subsumption refers to the putting-out system, to cottage industry, etc., where absolute surplus value could be extorted by capitalists–originally merchant capitalists, in Marx’s formulation–changing the terms on which means of production were provided and products bought. This is, as far as England is concerned, a 17th- and 18th-century phenomenon that lasts into the 19th, and is displaced by real subsumption and the beginning of the factory system. Clearly this happens before and during Marx’s time and is increasing as he writes Capital. His arguments with Proudhon, for instance, hinge upon the fact that Proudhon’s constituents are artisans who are only formally subsumed, and thus differ from the English proletariat. From what I’ve heard, the former were, in France, a larger part of the working class than proletarians proper, at least until the Paris Commune. But Marx is telling the story from the viewpoint of cotton in England, no? I’m sure the history is much more complicated.
In any case, it’s certainly more than weird for Negri to place real subsumption in the 1970s, after/during Fordism. I’ve always assumed that he means this is a “second” subsumption, where aspects of unwaged activity become value-producing, and as you’ve noted before there are problems with this concept, and significant conflicts with important attempts to think domestic and reproductive labor as value-producing. I do think he might be right in so much as, in advanced capitalist countries, there is increasing interpellation of people as consumers, which is one of the ways that excess capacity/capital can get realized. There’s probably a case to be made about an increase in value-realizing or value-producing activity outside of the workplace in the 20th-century, even if such forms have been existed throughout the history of capitalism. I’m always inclined to read this through Debord’s notion of spectacle. Indeed, that’s sort of the premise of the dissertation I’m getting ready to write. . .
Comment by Jasper — December 20, 2008 @ 10:40 am
I’ll say also that one of things which interest me about Negri’s account is that if you read someone like Harvey on the changes in mode-of-production in the 80s and 90s–offshoring, outsourcing, reliance on subcontractors, temporary and part-time workers, etc.–it starts to seem as if capital is creating a layer that “looks like” formal subsumption, and which sits atop a really subsumed layer. It’s inventing a kind of pre-Fordism that sits atop Fordism. . .This is crude, I know, and needs qualification, but there’s something to the Hegelian logic of capital reaching backward to the past to find the forms of future accumulation.
Comment by Jasper — December 20, 2008 @ 10:56 am
hi Jasper,
Thanks for the kind words and substantive comments. I agree that Negri’s tracking onto important changes. At the same time I think Negri’s response to and account of changes in recent history magnifies some things and obscures or neglects others, to a degree that’s distorting.
The thing about formal following after real in recent times is interesting. Marx says that the order can work that way, but I think he had something somewhat different in mind, in part because he just hadn’t seen this stuff play out. I’m not sure but my sense is that he meant that real subsumption in one industry can lead to formal subsumption in another which then lays the ground for real subsumption in that second industry.
I’m not as up on any of this as I’d like to be, one point of comparison might be the relationship between transportation and other sectors, or between raw material production and work on raw material. Because of stuff I’ve been reading recently I’m thinking of both in relation to slavery, that may muddy the waters though. Here’s another possible example, one I know even less about - the use of home-work which I think was sometimes called the putting out system, where factory owners sent work home with employees or sent it to other workers’ homes. That’d be an example of real and formal not working in a straight forward light (and I find the terms only minimally helpful), and one where the extension of waged labor into the home was not followed by real subsumption of the home.
Anyhow, I think that’s an interesting point you mention and I’ll have to think more about it. My impulse is to say that assumptions like I think Negri makes and I know some other Marxists make is that one is more advanced or more properly capitalist (the terms real vs formal could be taken to imply that) and other forms are a throwback to other modes of production. I don’t think that kind of stuff is very helpful. (Not saying *you* do that, just sort of thinking out loud.)
I also think it’d be worth exploring the terminological differences between subsumption in the rough draft to subordination in the finished work, even though it’s the same word (I’m pretty sure on that, been a while since I checked and my German is pretty poor) - I don’t have the time right now and it’d be pretty speculative, but I think there’s a way in which “subsumption” can get figured as spatial - the capital relation as something one is inside or outside of - as well as having a hegelian overtone of forward motion (subsumed during the expansion and march onward of capitalism, and perhaps of human history?), where as “subordination” foregrounds power relations.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — December 20, 2008 @ 11:36 am
Well, formal and real subsumption have probably existed in some mixture throughout the history of capitalism. It’s certainly the case that both are important parts of current strategies of accumulation. For instance, direct marketing of credit to consumers–what Marx calls “secondary exploitation”–is a kind of formal subsumption, I think.
But for me the question that’s open is about the choices that capitalists make. I think it’s probably right to say that, for awhile, one could multiply capital through formal subsumption–that is, absolute surplus-value–and then, eventually, this strategy on its own became insufficient, requiring capital to valorize itself through reorganization and mechanization. It makes sense to think of formal subsumption as, in some sense, “easier,” and therefore that capitalists will make profits this way if they can. Maybe it’s the case that there was always *some* reorganization/mechanization at work–I think this is Brenner’s version of the transition to capitalism– but at some point it becomes necessary for capital to focus more on real subsumption as a strategy of accumulation. In addition, you can’t have a high degree of real subsumption until you have a large accumulation of capital. Real subsumption requires fixed capital investment, and there were fewer capitalists to do this, and fewer lending institutions to help such projects, before the 19th century. This doesn’t mean, of course, that where it’s possible to accumulate through formal subsumption capital won’t do that. There has always been an attempt to accumulate through driving down wages. Like I said, this strategy is easier.
I do think when Marx talks about formal subs. he means the putting-system, but you’re probably right that there was some real subsumption going on there as well. I don’t know enough about the history. But in any case, I agree that most instances can’t be defined in terms of one or the other.
Real subsumption is a tricky term, it seems, because it refers to both mechanization and reorganization of the workforce. These two things have mostly gone together, but I suspect that, early in the history of capitalism, there are many instances of real subsumption that feature the former but not the latter.
Happy Holidays, Nate. I hope you can finish up your grading soon!
Jasper
Comment by Jasper — December 21, 2008 @ 8:34 am
hi Jasper,
I finished late yesterday afternoon, thankfully. Thanks for the well wishes and holiday greetings. Happy holidays to you too.
Thanks as well for this comment, it’s thought provoking. Can you say more about consumer credit as formal subsumption? That’s really interesting but I need some help connecting the dots (was up late last night and up early this morning, sorry if I’m being slow).
Your point that real subsumption includes mechanization and re-organization is helpful. I think it’s fair enough to consider mechanization as generally a version of restructuring power relations on the job but I think it’s useful to separate the two analytically, and to recognize that restructuring power relations can be a form of real subsumption. This connects to part of why I don’t like some versions of real subsumption. When I first heard the terms, I thought of it this way - real subsumption is when a workplace or production process is reshaped according to capitalist ends and formal subsumption is when a non-capitalist production process is taken over by capitalism. That’s a bad definition, though, because being taken over by capitalists involve being reshaped in the direction of capitalist ends. Like a lot of things this all depends on definitions. Like if we think of formal subsumption as absolute surplus value production it could be easy to make the real vs formal distinction (and absolute vs relative surpluse value is a useful distinction). But let’s say the workday goes from 10 to 14 hours a day. It’s not as if everything proceeds exactly the same just longer - work is different experientially when we’re more tired. Going home from work in the dark is different than going home in daylight. Loss of four hours takes away time from other pursuits (perhaps with an offloading of other labor (like unwaged and reproductive labors) onto some person or people elsewhere. This is less of an objection to Marx than it is to Negri and others, I think, in that formal subsumption substantially remakes social relations outside the immediate point of production even if the point of production is largely unchanged (and I think that’s questionable too).
One other comment - I think your framing this as about choices capitalists make is helpful. I think with this there’s an issue of levels of analysis. Like are we talking about some individual capitalists, some capitalists in particular industries, collective capitalists in particular industries (like manufacturers associations etc) and/or prevailing trends in an industry, collective capital in the form of the state, prevailing trends among all capitalists, or all capitalists as such (such that we’re talking about the capital relation itself, maybe). That’s not an objection to you, but again to Negri et al. I think some of the terms get used at a level of generality that can hide as much as they reveal, like the terms don’t have enough historical, geographic, and industrial/economic specificity - treating absolute surplus value as an epoch etc. That’s not to say we can’t find consistencies and identify trends, but some of the talk about this stuff ends up sounding like there’s no more absolute surplus value production (which is easily demonstrable as false), or as if absolute surplus value can’t happen at the same time as relative surplus value (likewise, false). Part of what I’m griping about I think is treating these categories as having more of a temporal component than they it makes sense to do, rather than treating them as categories for power analysis. As you say, most situations can’t be defined with just one of these terms.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — December 21, 2008 @ 9:47 am
Hey Nate,
I agree with everything in last post, especially the second paragraph about how lengthening of the working day is, in and of itself, a reorganization of the working process, and can’t be simply seen as quantitative extension. . . I also think you’re right about the question of levels, which are always vexing for Marxist analysis.
As far as marketing of credit to workers as formal subsumption goes, I look it like this (and we have an issue of levels here as well): suppose that the creditor and the employer are essentially the same person (so, the “class of capital” or a company-store scenario). If the worker borrows in order to consume at a higher rate than she earns, and in addition pays interest on that credit, she will have to do one of two things to pay back the interest–1)lower her consumption or 2) work extra hours (at an another job, perhaps) to pay off the interest. In either case, if we add the earning from the interest to the surplus value that her employer earns from her labor, then this means more surplus value for the class of capital (or the company store) either through a lowering of the value of the basket of goods which she uses to reproduce her labor power or a de facto extension of the working day, none of which she receives as wages since she’s just paying off the interest. It’s unclear whether the former–lowering of the value of labor–is the same thing as formal subsumption. The latter clearly is, and I tend to think these are two sides of the same coin, and both are distinct from real subsumption (which doesn’t change the basket of goods which is the price of labor but rather makes the same basket or an equivalent basket cheaper). The former can’t be real subsumption here, since unlike much of the credit loaned to businesses and firms, credit to non-capitalist inividuals does nothing to raise the productivity of labor. . . In other words, while the credit system for businesses is necessary for the fixed capital investments that allow for the deepening of real subsumption/relative surplus value, the credit system for consumers obeys another type of logic altogether, the logic of formal subsumption, in my view, and I think the growth in the latter over the last 35 years demonstrates the slowing down of the former–that is, the decrease in the growth of labor productivity within the capitalist core. Thus, much of the story about “neoliberalism” that needs to be told is about formal rather than real subsumption–and, of course, the point that people like Harvey make about accumulation by dispossession is an added feature of this: adding more workers to capital, formally subsuming them, in order to make way for real subsumption. . . So, they’re a tag team, the formal and the real, and can in no way become the names of epochs.
Does any of that make sense? I find there’s little that makes me more incoherent than writing about Marx’s political economics. . . Indeed, there’s little that I find more challenging to the understanding.
Comment by Jasper — December 22, 2008 @ 3:32 pm
hi Jasper,
Happy holidays.
That’s interesting re: credit, thanks for expanding. It struck me again reading your comment that some of the real subsumption as epoch stuff really relies on a distinction between productive and unproductive labor (which isn’t necessarily controversial or wrong, but it does seem to leave out household labor prior to the present). Your example of consumption dropping made me think of this. If consumption is measured in money it’s different than if measured in use values - disposable income vs some other measure. Wages can drop but consumption can stay the same if unwaged labor time dedicated to securing consumption increases (or, conceivably, becomes more efficient). That could be a version of real subsumption or of formal subsumption of unwaged labor, depending. If the value of goods consumed drops, though, then presumably this is tied to a drop in the labor time socially necessary to produce labor power and eventually a drop in wages, which would increased productivity of variable capital. That would be relative surplus value, which is what Marx identifies with real subsumption, not with formal subsumption. As part of that, I’m not sure I’d see recent stuff as about formal rather than real subsumption, though if I had to pick I’d take that narrative over the post-operaismo version of real subsumption as epoch. Two things on this - one, depending on point of view, primitive accumulation is real subsumption, not formal subsumption: driving people out of one labor process and into another. Two, I think your point about this being a tag team is really the heart of the matter and is totally right. The issue is class power, with real subsumption and formal subsumption describing different relatively local operations (and describing them in very schematic terms) with little built in temporal component - so, not epochs and neither is more appropriate to fully capitalist time or something while the other is a throwback.
One last thing, a quote:
“Early industrialization [in the United States] enhanced the importance of women’s work in the North, as the spread of the putting-out system in such industries as shoemaking, hatmaking, and clothing manufacture allowed women working at home to contribute to family income as they retained responsibility for domestic chores. At the same time, the early factories offered new employment opportunities for the teenaged daughters of farm families.” (Foner, _The Story of American Freedom_ p73.) Seems to me this quote helps support the argument that there’s a real subsumption of domestic labor as well as the argument that industrialization has a massive effect on life outside the factory (the latter is obvious, but I think it bears repeating against the idea of the social factory as an epoch, as if factories and factory workers weren’t always bound up with social totalities).
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — December 29, 2008 @ 1:08 am
You’re totally right about unwaged work. That’s an important part of any story.
I don’t mean to imply that there’s been no real subsumption over the last 30 years, or in neoliberalism. That would be pretty dumb. The real subsumption of, say, agriculture in the developing world and here, to take just one example, has been profound and profoundly devastating. And some of what Negri’s getting at, about the reforming of the social field according to the mandates of value-prodution, is, in my view, correct.
Perhaps formal subsumption is simply an awkward term here, since it’s related, for Marx, to a historical moment and can’t really be used to describe absolute surplus value in work places that are already really subsumed . I’m realzing now the disjunction between, say, the story about trans. to capitalism in the unpublished sixth chapter of Capital and in the primitive accumulation chapter. . .
I feel like we need three terms for three different forms of exploitaiton/surplus-value generation–
1) real subsumption-relative surplus v.
2) formal subsumption (or perhaps other term) absolute surplus v.
3)”________” surplus value generation by depreciation of the price of labor (which sometimes involves subsumption, real or “formal,” of unwaged work.
I want to distinguish between (2) and (3) and tie some of the work of financialization recently to (3). Right now, as the government buys up bad assets in order to halt a massive deflation of commodities, it’s essentially turning deflation into inflation, and making every holder of US dollars pay for the crisis (complicated, of course, by what happens with taxation in the future). This will then drive down the price of labor. It’s a form of exploitation but it doesn’t really match to category (1) or (2), unless there are opportunities for people to work longer. Then (1). But if there are no opportunities, and people simply reduce consumption, then it’s something else.
As always, Nate, it’s been edifying to discuss this stuff with you.
Happy New Year!
Jasper
Comment by Jasper — December 29, 2008 @ 12:33 pm
hi Jasper,
Thanks for the kind words and the well wishes, right back at you. I agree with you about needing to specify these categories more so but I don’t see this is as an issue of categories distinct from 1 and 2 but rather distinctions within those categories. That is, I think you’re talking about an important sort of phenomenon that’s contained within one of Marx’s categories but where Marx’s discussion of that category isn’t specific enough. It’s like primitive accumulation - I’m not sure of all of them off the top of my head but Marx identifies several modes of primitive accumulation that work together, including debt and slavery. The category primitive accumulation alone is not enough to make sense of debt or slavery, but those phenomena fit within that larger category of primitive accumulation. Know what I mean?
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — January 3, 2009 @ 2:08 pm
“One other thing: this is arguably real subsumption. But it’s not preceded by formal subsumption. (Of course all of this depends on where we set the parameters.) The railways were capitalist enterprises from the outset. There wasn’t a pre-capitalist railway which was taken over - formally subsumed - and remade - really subsumed. There was a capitalist railway which was restructured to give more control to employers.”
I don’t agree with these statements, but then again I don’t agree with your definitions of formal and real subsumption, either.
There were no pre-capitalist railway workers– very true. There were no pre-capitalist railways–very true.
This doesn’t mean however that the formation of labor for railway work was one of real subsumption or that it wasn’t preceded by formal subsumption, even if the processes of formal and real subsumption of railway labor has some unique features (which I think it does.)
The issue isn’t whether there was a pre-capitalist railway industry or not. The issue is whether railroad industries utilized organizations and modes of labor which were pre-capitalist–they did. Therefore, the subsumption of labor under railroad industries was a formal subsumption of labor, not a real subsumption of labor.
(In case this shows up as a multiple post–I apologize. For some reason, I can’t seem to post on your blog without getting an error message.)
Comment by Yusef — January 8, 2009 @ 6:38 pm
hi Yusef,
Sorry about the posting problems, I don’t understand how the blog software works or why it does what it does. For this conversation it’d really help if you offered your objections to how I’m defining real and formal subsumption and your alternative definitions, without that it’s hard to proceed. I also don’t understand what you mean when you say that the railroad industry had pre-capitalist organizations and modes of labor. Can you explain what you mean by that? Here’s some of Marx defining and describing formal subsumption, in the document I linked to in the post:
“the peasant who previously produced independently for himself becomes a day labourer working for a farmer” “the man who was previously a slaveholder employs his former slaves as wage labourers”
He describes this as “production processes with a different social determination” becoming “converted into the production process of capital.”
He stresses that “the change indicated does not mean that an essential change takes place from the outset in the real way in which the labour process is carried on, in the real production process. On the contrary, it is in the nature of the matter that where a subsumption of the labour process under capital takes place it occurs on the basis of an existing labour process, which was there before its subsumption under capital, and was formed on the basis of various earlier processes of production and other conditions of production. Capital thus subsumes under itself a given, existing labour process, such as handicraft labour, the mode of agriculture corresponding to small-scale independent peasant farming. If changes take place in these traditional labour processes which have been brought under the command of capital, these modifications can only be the gradual consequences of the subsumption of given, traditional labour processes under capital, which has already occurred.”
It seems to me that Marx here defines formal subsumption as (at least among other things) the conversion of an enterprise from a non-capitalist to a capitalist enterprise, where the labor process stays more of less the same. If you read Marx differently here, fair enough and I’m willing to have my mind changed on how to read Marx here. Marx again, he refers to “the specifically capitalist mode of production (labour on a large scale, etc.) which, as has been shown, takes shape as capitalist production progresses, and which revolutionises the kind of labour done and the real mode of the entire labour process, simultaneously with the relations between the various agents of production.”
There was no pre-existing railway labor process - railways don’t pre-date capitalism, as in your comment. I would add that railways were created by capitalist enterprises and were capitalist affairs from their outset, including being on a large scale, one of the traits Marx identifies as ’specifically capitalist’. (This doesn’t mean the railway industry doesn’t change, it does, capitalism involves, as some say, constant revolutions in production [we might call this re-subsumption or something].) That being the case, there could not be any formal subsumption of railways.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — January 8, 2009 @ 7:18 pm
“It seems to me that Marx here defines formal subsumption as (at least among other things) the conversion of an enterprise from a non-capitalist to a capitalist enterprise, where the labor process stays more of less the same. ”
Nate, thanks for responding and especially for indicating to me where I could have been clearer in explaining myself.
I don’t think Marx’s definitions involve any considerations of conversions of enterprises. He is not concerned with conversions of enterprises from pre-capitalist to capitalist formations. He is concerned by the changes of labor processes from pre-capitalist to capitalist formations. For one thing, the vast majority of industry and enterprise around us today didn’t exist in the pre-capitalist world–it’s virtually all capitalist. So, there’s not that much enterprise to be converted from the pre-capitalist world.
(”That being the case, there could not be any formal subsumption of railways”–yes, however the process of conversion from formal to real subsumption does not apply to the railways, it applies to railway labor.)
On the other hand,when these industries and enterprises did develop after the dawning of the capitalist world, they had to draw their labor from somewhere–and this was from, by necessity, their pre-capitalist formations. It is the labor which undergoes conversion. Railroads were built by such people as Chinese “coolie” labor, people who are lifted out of the production processes of time immemorial to build what was then the highest of high tech production. Their lifting, digging,hammering, carrying, and other manual skills pre-existing their railroad work could be utilized by the railroad, with whatever other skills they needed inadequately grafted on top.
Their children, on the other hand, would be formed from earliest age with eating, sleeping, exercising,relaxing, reading, learning skills–in truth, virtually every aspect of their lives– deliberately formed optimized for capitalist production. These children, no more hard working,tougher or smarter than their parents, will be vastly more productive.
Comment by Yusef — January 10, 2009 @ 11:56 am
hi Yusef,
I’m in a rush, but I want to reply now because you’ve set wheels turning in my head. Briefly, by enterprise I didn’t mean some firm which spanned the transition from pre-capitalism to capitalism, I only meant that there could be a limited spatial scope - one area converting from self-employed farmers to waged agricultural labor, with the agricultural practices (tools used, crop rotation, etc) not really changing. I realize now my terms weren’t very precise, I appreciate you pointing that out. I’ll take another crack at that when I have more time. Regarding coolie labor, I think you’re slipping from subsumption of labor in two senses - subsumption of labor processes and subsumption of labor power. I think that ambiguity is productive - it gets at what I think Marx isn’t as good on, the subsumption of people’s lives, which as I said earlier makes things look differently - but I think there’s an analytic separation there. Second thing with regard to the railway industry, I meant the labor process in running railways after their construction, involving the labor of brakemen, switchmen, firemen, etc. That labor process was changed many times but wasn’t formally subsumed because that labor process only came into being after capitalism. Is that any clearer than I was before?
I have to run, more later.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — January 10, 2009 @ 6:41 pm
http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1864/economic/ch02a.htm#469a
“[w]here a subsumption of the labour process under capital takes place it occurs on the basis of an existing labour process, which was there before its subsumption under capital, and was formed on the basis of various earlier processes of production and other conditions of production. Capital thus subsumes under itself a given, existing labour process, such as handicraft labour, the mode of agriculture corresponding to small-scale independent peasant farming. If changes take place in these traditional labour processes which have been brought under the command of capital, these modifications can only be the gradual consequences of the subsumption of given, traditional labour processes under capital, which has already occurred. The fact that the labour becomes more intensive, or the duration of the labour process is prolonged, that the labour becomes more continuous and more systematic under the eyes of the interested capitalist, etc., none of these things changes the character of the real labour process itself, the real mode of labour. This therefore forms a great contrast to the specifically capitalist mode of production (labour on a large scale, etc.) which, as has been shown, takes shape as capitalist production progresses, and which revolutionises the kind of labour done and the real mode of the entire labour process, simultaneously with the relations between the various agents of production. It is in order to mark the contrast with the latter mode of the labour process that we call the subsumption of the labour process under capital examined so far[230] — which is the subsumption under capital of a mode of labour already developed before the emergence of the capital-relation — the formal subsumption of labour under capital. The capital-relation is a relation of compulsion, the aim of which is to extract surplus labour by prolonging labour time — it is a relation of compulsion which does not rest on any personal relations of domination and dependence, but simply arises out of the difference in economic functions. This capital-relation as a relation of compulsion is common to both modes of production, but the specifically capitalist mode of production also possesses other ways of extracting surplus value. If, in contrast to this, the basis is an existing mode of labour, hence a given level of development of the productive power of labour and a mode of labour which corresponds to this productive power, surplus value can only be created by prolonging labour time, hence in the manner of absolute surplus value. Therefore, where this is the sole form of production of surplus value, we have the formal subsumption of labour under capital.
(…) the whole real shape of the mode of production changes with the production of relative surplus value (…) a specifically capitalist mode of production arises (technologically as well), on the basis of which, and with which, there also begins a simultaneous development of the relations of production corresponding to the capitalist production process — relations between the different agents of production, in particular between the capitalist and the wage labourer. (…) Just as the production of absolute surplus value can be regarded as the material expression of the formal subsumption of labour under capital, so the production of relative surplus value can be regarded as that of the real subsumption of labour under capital.
In any case, if each of the two forms of surplus value — absolute and relative — is considered for itself, in its separate existence and absolute surplus value always precedes relative — we can say that two separate forms of the subsumption of labour under capital, or two separate forms of capitalist production, correspond to the two forms of surplus value. The first form of production always constitutes the predecessor of the second, although the second, which is the further developed form, can in turn form the basis for the introduction of the first in new branches of production.
(…)
I call the form which rests on absolute surplus value the formal subsumption of labour under capital because it is distinguished only formally from the earlier modes of production on the basis of which it directly originates (is introduced), modes in which either the producers are self-employing, or the direct producers have to provide surplus labour for others. The compulsion exerted there, i.e. the method of extracting surplus labour, is of a different kind. The essential features of formal subsumption are these:
1) the purely money relation between the person who is appropriating the surplus labour and the person who provides it; to the extent that subordination arises, it arises from the particular content of the sale, not from a subordination pre-posited to the sale, which might have placed the producer in a relation other than the money relation (the relation of one commodity owner to another) towards the exploiter of his labour, as a consequence of political conditions, etc. It is only as owner of the conditions of labour that the buyer brings the seller into a condition of economic dependency; it is not any kind of political and socially fixed relation of domination and subordination.
2) Something implied by the first relation — for otherwise the worker would not have to sell his labour capacity — namely the fact that the objective conditions of his labour (the means of production) and the subjective conditions of his labour (the means of subsistence) confront him as capital, as monopolised by the buyer of his labour capacity. The more completely these conditions of labour confront him as alien. property, the more completely does the relation of capital and wage labour occur formally, hence the formal subsumption of labour under capital, which is the condition and presupposition of its real subsumption.
As yet there is no difference in the mode of production itself. The labour process, seen from the technological point of view, continues exactly as it did before, except that now it is a labour process subordinated to capital. Nevertheless, there develops within the production process itself, as previously demonstrated, 1) an economic relation of domination and subordination, in that the consumption of labour capacity is done by the capitalist, and is therefore supervised and directed by him; and 2) a great
continuity and intensity of labour and a greater economy in the employment of the conditions of labour, in that every effort is made to ensure that the product only represents socially necessary labour time (or rather, less than. that).”
Comment by Nate — October 25, 2009 @ 12:45 am
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/economic/ch37.htm
http://poltergeist.blogsome.com/2006/11/15/logic-and-history-in-the-concept-of-subsumption/
http://www.duke.edu/~hardt/ONE-APP.htm
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/060_decadence_part08.html
http://www.marxists.org/archive/camatte/capcom/ch03.htm
http://home.earthlink.net/~lrgoldner/postone.html
http://libcom.org/library/marxism-dead-long-live-marxism-mike-rooke
http://www.geocities.com/~johngray/lip02.htm
http://theoriecommuniste.communisation.net/English/Presentation,17/Who-we-are
http://libcom.org/library/invisible-politics-introduction-contemporary-communisation-john-cunningham
http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/auf_11_tcreply.html
http://www.lettersjournal.org/blog/archives/66
http://www.riff-raff.se/en/8/
http://endnotes.org.uk/texts/endnotes_1/afterword.xhtml
Comment by Nate — October 25, 2009 @ 1:00 am