Reading Capital, continued (thread #2)...

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Dhalgren
10-12-2009, 09:30 AM

If you think about slavery, the cost of feeding and housing the slaves is rarely considered beyond the normal "overhead". That, I think, is how wages are viewed. There is that quotation that someone put up a few days ago - "We work so we can eat so we can work so we can eat so we can work..." Food, clothing and shelter (i.e. "wages") are the same any slave would receive if the massa wanted to keep working him/her...

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anaxarchos
10-12-2009, 12:42 PM

You are quite right that human labor, if it produces commodities, creates the same value regardless of the social mode employed. Not only slave labor but serf labor was sometimes so employed. In general, though, neither slave (ancient slavery, not capitalist slavery) nor serf-based production was primarily commodity producing. The surplus was typically consumed.

As to the portion which went to the producers, that... as we shall see... was set independently from the value which was created by the expenditure of that labor power. The former was essentially set at the cost of reproduction of the laborer, whether that laborer was "free", enslaved, or merely "obligated". That cost of reproduction had a social component that made it vary from physical subsistence, no less for slaves than for modern wage earners.

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anaxarchos
10-12-2009, 12:46 PM

slavery was political testimony to the fact that all labor could not be reduced to a commonality. More, commodity production itself was rare. It's hard to conceive of that which you don't see...

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Two Americas
10-12-2009, 12:50 PM

A couple of insights here. If I am going off topic let me know.

We are not the only ones saying "labor is the source of all wealth." So are the apologists for capitalism, they just won't admit it. They deny that labor is the source of all wealth, but operate strictly within the confines of that. They don't hold a "different opinion" about this, they deny that they share our opinion. What they are really saying is that YOUR labor is of no value particularly until and unless they decide that it is. THEIR labor, however, is of infinite value, and everything they do they want us to consider to be labor. They are out on their yacht, for example, sipping cocktails and thinking beautiful thoughts about how to outsource your job, and then demand that they are rewarded for that "labor." That "labor" is to be seen as vastly more valuable than your labor is.

That means that apologies for capitalism are based on a lie, and it also means that capitalism is inherently and thoroughly anti-social.

Labor being the source of all wealth is simply true, not because Marx says so, anymore than the existence of gravity depends upon Newton's opinion or doctrine.

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Kid of the Black Hole
10-12-2009, 01:56 PM

which, politically, quickly comes to mean that you have to have a society of free producers. This is the political impetus that ends capitalist slavery anyway (and also sparks the movements towards political freedoms a la Locke, Mill, etc..see, its not an abstraction to say that society conforms itself to meet the needs of commodity production)

The fall of the Roman Empire ends the mode of production dominated by slave labor I think and the varied feudal lords become the de facto rulers. The big shift is that the predominant means of production is the land.

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Kid of the Black Hole
10-12-2009, 05:03 PM

its hard to take it all in at once..that is one big reason I see for revisting this "elementary" material

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curt_b
10-12-2009, 07:22 PM

It's common for advocates of capitalism to see wages as related to the value of commodities. That is "If something is worth so much, that the deserved wage is so much". The early introduction of slave labor as a component of abstract human labor, cuts that to the quick.

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anaxarchos
10-12-2009, 09:10 PM

You read through this section of Capital far too quickly the first time, didn't you?

Besides, this is among the few parts of the book that is straight out of the Science of Logic. The "elementary" material is the hardest? Yep.

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anaxarchos
10-12-2009, 09:36 PM

... (written history) that labor is the basis of exchange value, even if the reduction is not understood. The original trade tables of the Sumerians (which we will talk about shortly), include labor time notations. It is only with Capitalism that the first systemic denial of value creation by labor content appears. Even then, the effort is so crude and pro forma as to be obviously self serving. Thus the Mercantilists point to value creation in commerce alone, which by sheer accident, happens to be their vocation. The Physiocrats counter with value creation being "a gift of nature", rooted in the soil alone, with all other productive activity being merely transformative. Not surprisingly, they count themselves among the largest landowners.

When "Economic Science" is actually born, the labor foundation of it is universally accepted even if the details are poorly described. It takes nearly 100 years to marshal an attack on this most embarrassing "discovery". Once again, when the marginalists in their various incarnations attempt to tie use-value to value, they do so in such an abstract way as to make it nearly useless. Moreover, they openly undertake an effort nearly unique in the "sciences": to manufacture a new answer because they didn't like the implications of the old one...

In any case, most neo-classical economics bears some similarity to what you write. It is not so much that they accept the labor foundation of "value", so much as they reject such "Moralizing". "What difference does it make?"

This is said, usually just before they about to engage in the most banal moralizing on the most unworthy of subjects.

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Kid of the Black Hole
10-13-2009, 04:36 AM

In Section 1 it sounds so disarmingly simple and it starts to feel like just a lot of extraneous verbiage after that and fetishism is sort of the glamorous part of the Chapter..

Am waitin' on your follow up on capitalist crisis..