1. a. What is the Marxian theory of money that emerges from the first three or four parts of Capital Volume I? Explain how this theory is a theory of social power and of domination.
We can read chapter one backwards as a theory of money , as the embodiment of a set of social relations, as these social relations include the imposition of some social average amount of work through certain forms (exchange-value), we see that money embodies the capitalist power to command life as labor, i.e one peculiar form of domination. Money as universal equivalent and as means of exchange appears first and foremost as wage which defines life as labor power and command it into the factory/office.
b. What has to happen to convert money into capital? How did this occur during the period of primitive accumulation?
To convert money into capital people must be put in a position where they are forced to sell part of their lives for a wage in order to live. Unless people can be forced to prostitute themselves, having money does not give command over labor and thus the possibility of surplus labor. In general "primitive accumulation" has to occur. Moreover, this prostitution means that not only will people sell their lives but once sold they will actually work --although how much and at what price will always be struggled over.
Marx's analysis of primitive accumulation is aimed primarily at showing how this process occurred in England. And the answer there turned out to be pretty much universally true. Namely that people lost their ability to produce for themselves, lost their land and animals to grow food, lost their tools and space for artisanal construction. On the one hand was the enclosure of the lands --such as the clearings in England-- which occurred elsewhere through other means, such as the genocidal destruction of the indigenous population, the state assigning of land to capitalists (e.g., the US railroads), the collectivization of the peasantry, or other artificial means such as those recommended by Wakefield. On the other hand people had to be forced to work for money, so that money could be used to force them to work. Thus the "bloody legislation" against the landless, from England to post Civil War USA and its prison labor force made up of "vagrants" ex-slaves and poor whites. Of course to put people to work, once they have been coerced into making themselves available, the means of production also have to be available for monetary purchase, etc.
c. How can and does the working class wield money against capital? How does this occur within education?
Most obviously when the working class uses the wage or some other form of income to strengthen its resistance to work, or to further its self-valorization, it is subverting the wage as an investment in human capital, it is rupturing M-C(MS)...P...LP* and shifting the relationship back to LP - M - C(MS). This can change from wages used as strike funds to using money for self-defined projects that strengthen non-capitalist activities or avoid, bypass capitalist reproduction. Money spent on tools/guns to rob banks etc undermines the reproduction of labor power. But so too can money spent on the elaboration of activities (music, dance,etc) that expand at the expense of, rather than as a support to, capitalist reproduction. e.g. student loans and grants that are used for education and self-valorization rather than job training subverts capital, just as its expenditures on protests and disruptions do!
2. Explain the difference between labor and labor power. What is the relationship between work performed in the consumption of the means of subsistence and the value of labor-power? What is the relationship between this work and that done in the factory for the capitalist?
Labor is work, the actual process of working or laboring, i.e., in the terms of chapter 7 of Volume I of Capital it is the use by workers of tools to produce commodities out of raw materials. Labor power on the other hand is the willingness and ability to labor or work. Just because capital buys labor power doesn't necessarily mean work can be gotten out of the worker. If, for example, there is a shortage of raw materials or machines break down, or workers go on strike, then labor power can not be converted into work, that is to say the use-value of labor power can not be realized by the capitalist.
Work performed in the consumption of the value of labor power, such as shopping, cooking, cleaning, sewing, etc., is work which contributes to the recreation of labor power. Whether such work results in an increase or decrease in the value of labor power depends. If such work substitutes for formal work, i.e., gardening for the work of producing store-bought food stuffs, then the value of labor power can be reduced (if the capitalist has the power) or kept down (ditto) --as in the case of south African gold mine labor which is supported part of the year in the homelands by such subsistence work. On the other hand, if such work produces more labor power, i.e., more workers, then the aggregate value of labor power rises with the expansion of the labor force. Moreover, if such work leads to the demand for more real income, i.e., washingmachines form women doing housework, the success of such demands may result in a rise in the value of labor power as the capitalists pay out higher wages. Therefore the relationship is contingent and may go either way.
To the degree that housework actually reproduces of labor power, then it is essential to the reproduction of formal factory work. If housework breaks down (wives leave, or go on strike, workers divert their energy into play, etc) then work done in the formal waged job may be undermined and be done less efficiently. If there is an increase in the productivity of housework (from the capitalist point of view) then work in the waged job may improve in quality and even quantity.
3. Discuss the difference between schooling as a sphere of the reproduction of labor power and activities which are moments of self-valorization. Explain the theoretical difference and give examples of how what appear to be self-valorizing activities may actually be just reproducing labor power. Also give examples of how activities which normally reproduce labor power might be turned into those of self-valorization.
Schooling is what goes on in schools when they work as planned --institutions designed to produce and reproduce labor power. Activities of self-valorization are self-determined activities whose object is self-development not the conversion of life into labor power. Now as a physical space we can easily see that schools may be terrains of struggle between schooling and self-valorization. Professors lay out courses of study to produce labor power. Students may take such courses and try to appropriate them, or elements of them, for their own purposes --say learning or educating oneself. Professors may even understand the difference between these two kinds of activity and try to spend at least part of their teaching time providing resources to students in ways which encourage and/or facilitate the student's appropriation of that material.
Whether or not, or to what degree, actual activities constitute either the reproduction of labor power or self-valorization can frequently only be determined by their relationship to other activities and to the accumulation of capital itself. If they contribute to it, or directly undermine it (say through sabotage) then the case is pretty clear cut either way. But often, one may feel like one is self-valorizing but, upon reflection, realize that one has just been enjoying participating in accumulation. For example, after a hard day's work, an enjoyable hour listening to music or watching television, which at first seems to constitute self-valorization, may upon examination turn out not to contribute anything to one's autonomous self-constitution but merely contribute to one's reproduction as labor power --when the hour so spent has just regenerated enough energy to go back to studying. This is why in judging whether any given activity falls on one side or the other (capital's or the working class') it must be examined in terms of the role it plays, not just whether or not one enjoys it.
At the same time, people are quite capable of converting mundane activities of reproduction into self-valorization. For capital we eat to restore our energy to work, or we eat to consume marketed commodities that we'll work to get. But if we turn our energy to the struggle against capital, if we eat as a form of social bonding in struggle, if we turn cooking into a social art into which we channel energies which were previously available for our work, then we are appropriating capital's commodities for our own purposes, we are subverting their social role and reconstituting them as part of our own autonomous development. In school we are to study to discipline ourselves into labor power. But if we use the resources of the university --libraries, peers, professors, tools, etc.-- for the realization of autonomous projects --such as learning how to enjoy life, or how to struggle against capital, then we have converted schooling into self-valorization.
4. Discuss the relationship between Marx's analysis of the labor process and his analysis of valorization. In what way might his analysis of the labor process be interpreted as one of "self-valorization"? To the degree that this were so, does his analysis exhaust the theoretical discussion of "self-valorization"? Give examples, from both the sphere of production and the sphere of reproduction, (as well as outside both) to illustrate your discussion.
He gives the analysis of the labor process first in a generic kind of way, as applicable in all situations --including capitalism, and then gives the analysis of valorization as what is specific about the labor process within capitalism. So the first part of the discussion must be thought of as being applicable during the second part of the discussion but not visa versa. His generic discussion is questionable if you take his methodological maxims seriously, i.e., that concepts are developed within certain periods of history and reflect the conditions of those periods and should not be taken as applicable to other periods. (e.g., rent tithe) In particular we can raise the question of whether it is reasonable to speak of "labor in general" or of a "labor process" as an abstraction in the period before capitalism. A case can be made that those activities which we now regroup under "labor" were in earlier periods not comparable at all, they were distinct with quite different cultural meanings, unlike capital where all "work" has the same basic cultural-political content of social control. For example, being a farmer was not just agricultural labor but a whole way of being within a community, replete with a fabric of meanings of the relations between people and between people and nature; being a mid-wife was not being a "delivery nurse" or an "gynecologist" --a specialized medical worker-- but a particular moment in the fabric of women's relations within specific cultural contexts.
The labor process can be seen as a process of self-valorization only because the discussion abstracts from the context of capital relations of domination. If we read the discussion of the labor process as a description of a kind of activity in which we might be engaged as part of our autonomous self-constitution, we can see such activities at least potentially as elements of self-valorization, as the activities of autonomous subjects exercising their will, objectifying themselves in the nature they transform and inscribe with their own meanings. For example, peasants or urban marginals involved in the construction of community housing and common spaces are "working" but that work can be part of a collective project of self-valorization; similarly, child rearing or learning can be, at least to some degree, liberated from the reproduction of labor power and transformed into self-valorization --to the degree that such activities contribute to the elaboration of autonomous ways of being.
No, the analysis does not exhaust the discussion unless "labor process" is conceived in such a broad way as to encompass all human activities --which certainly goes counter to the usual use of the term. It would seem that there are a vast array of human activities which can only, with great difficulty, be squeezed into the schema of humans using tools to transform nature. Conversation, swimming in the sea, hiking among the mountains, making love, etc. all lack that sense, yet are potentially creative aspects of the human experience that have the potential of being elements of self-valorization.
5. In what way might "alienation" be seen as the working class perspective on valorization? Discuss this using all the aspects of alienation which Marx analyses. Then discuss how we might conceive of the capitalist perspective on "self-valorization" using a similar, but inverse, shift in perspective.
Because "self-valorization" involves the elaboration of autonomous working class projects and activities, the capitalist perspective is either one of acceptance --if and only if those projects can be coopted, i.e., their autonomy subverted-- or one of repression: of all that autonomy which cannot be integrated into the self reproduction of capital. Thus unintegratable autonomy appears to capital as deviant, or backward, or schizophrenic, or criminal, or primitive, or underdeveloped, or delinquent, or sick, or paranoid, etc. In all these cases, the autonomy is seen as "not fitting in" as social misfit, social disorganization and thus as threats to the social order of capital. There is no place in capital for any kind of absolute autonomy, it does not tolerate heterogeneity which cannot be instrumentalized by the system, it crushes it, or incarcerates it. The student who willfully asserts autonomous attitudes toward learning is likely to be viewed as a delinquent and will be tracked either out of education or into special schools for malcontents. Those who refuse the price form are tried and jailed as criminals. Those who reject capitalist social conventions of job holding and certain patterns of interpersonal interaction may be ostracized or incarcerated in "mental Health" institutions where health is defined precisely in terms of the ability and willingness to hold down a job and "get along" with other job holders. The "primitive" must be modernized, the "underdeveloped" must be developed, "sick" must be healed. And so on.
6. a. In what sense is absolute surplus value a "strategy"? What has been the historical pattern of struggle over absolute surplus value from the periods covered by Marx's analysis to today? (Include here the struggle in reproduction as well as in production.)
The historical pattern of struggle is the following: in the first period the capitalists were successful in forcing the workers to work longer and longer (thus the section in chap 10 on the struggle over the lengthening of the working day); in the next period the workers were successful in first, bringing this expansion to a stop, and second in forcing a reduction in the length of the working day/week/year/etc. Thus the next chap in chap 10, thus the 10 hour movement, the 8 hour movement, the 5 day movement (in the 1930s) the successful demand for more paid vacation time and so on.
While Marx's analysis focuses on the struggle over time in production we can see that there has also been struggle over time outside of production. The capitalists have tried to reduce free time to time of reproduction of labor power while workers have fought for truly free time, time for self valorization. Thus in education students fight for time for self-education in the possibilities for enjoying life, while capital (the administration) tries to reduce schooling to job training and the inculcation of work discipline. Historically the victory by workers in reducing the working day in production led the capitalists to colonize free time in the above manner. This in turn led to the struggle for self-valorization. We can see the student and women's movements of the 1960s as involving the reappropriation of non-production time, not only a refusal to reproduce capital but a demand for self-valorization. Thus, students demanded fewer requirements and more time for black studies, women's studies, radical economics, insurgent sociology, Marxist history, etc. Indeed the creation of this course on Marx was a victory achieved by students here at UT after three years of struggle for more space to study what they wanted.
b. If capital didn't invent surplus labor, what did it invent? How does the discussion of section 2 of chapter 10 add to that of section 2 of chapter 7?
c. If there is still a surplus generated in post-capitalist society, by what criteria can we distinguish it from the surplus (surplus labor, surplus value) in capitalist society?
7. A capitalist might say "The reduction in the length of the working day over the past century or so has been beneficial for all parties involved; the owners of the means of production benefit because during the 8 hour day the worker is more productive and efficient --each labor hour is more productive and thus industry is more efficient; the workers benefit because they have more leisure time." Give a Marxist response to this argument both theoretical and historical, and in the process discuss the relationship between the decline in "absolute" surplus labor extracted in the waged job, and what might be viewed as "surplus labor" in the home and in other unwaged spheres of life.
This can be discussed in terms of the labor performed in the home which is extracted by the capitalist in the form of recreated labor power. More such "surplus labor" in the home --surplus in the sense that more is done that for simple self-valorization-- may offset for the capitalist the decline in absolute surplus labor on the job, if it contributes to improving the quality of labor power: either in the sense of a greater ability to work or of a greater willingness to work. In either case the surplus labor in the home could contribute to increased productivity on the job which would increase relative surplus value (at least in those jobs directly and indirectly productive of means of subsistence). In general, for all capitalists increased productivity would reduce costs and raise profits.
8. In Marx's analysis of relative surplus value, especially as it is developed in his discussion of machinery and modern industry, the fundamental motivation derives from the class struggle. Explain how relative surplus works at the aggregate level and at the micro level of the firm and the relation between the two levels. What kinds of struggles have provoked such a response from corporate capitalists?
Relative surplus value at the micro level of the firm works first through a redistribution of surplus value among firms and eventually through the macro effect in the way described above. Any firm able to raise productivity and reduce labor costs below the social average in the industry cuts costs below those of other firms and if it continues to sell at the socially average price it gains an extra surplus value. Assuming its own contribution to the industry to be small the increased surplus value comes less from a reduction in average v than from a redistribution to it from the other firms.
The kinds of struggles which have provoked such responses have been those which raise costs, e.g., successful reductions in the working day (which is what Marx emphasises) or increases in wages or benefits. The increase in costs, through whatever struggles, provokes the capitalists to attempt to lower their costs by raising productivity. Perhaps it should be added that in general this will be the response to successful cost raising struggles which the capitalists have failed to contain directly with brute force, government intervention, manipulation of trade union bureaucrats, etc. Capitalist success with such measures reduces their incentive to find more progressive cost reducing responses, such as raising productivity. Given recent experience, as well as that in Marx's day, we might also add that geographic mobility from places where workers are powerful to those where they are less so has also provided capitalists with an alternative to substantial investments in productivity raising technological changes, and thus reduced the need for progressive responses.
9. Within Marx's discussion of relative surplus value in part IV there is considerable analysis of the division of labor (at several levels). How is his discussion related to his distinction between the formal and real subordination of labor to capital? Which such divisions may be related to Marx's discussion of the technical, value and organic compositions of capital? Explain what the concepts of class composition, political recomposition and decomposition add to the analysis. How can such analysis be extended to the sphere of reproduction?
For the most part Marx's discussion of the technical, value and organic compositions of capital seem to have refered to the shop floor organization of production, though this need not be the case. At any rate the issue of the division of labor is most clearly related to the technical and organic compositions of capital given that it is implicit in the former and the later changes only as the former changes. Any technical composition designating some combination of machinery and living labor power must, concretely, involve some given division of labor; any change in the technical composition (or the associated organic composition) is likely to involve a change in the division of labor --though marginal changes may not, e.g., substitution of a more productive computer for a less productive one in a secretarial pool.
The concepts of class composition, political recomposition and decomposition add to the analysis by emphasizing the structure and dynamic of power relations associated both with given divisions of labor (or technical compositions) and with changes in it. The class composition looks at the division of labor in terms of how it is associated with vertical hierarchies of power both among workers and between workers and capital. Political recomposition refers to the processes of struggle through which those hierarchies are altered, undermined or bypassed in such ways as to strengthen the workers as a class against capital. Decomposition refers to the processes through which capital may introduce new divisions of labor through new technologies or other forms of reorganization with the aim of breaking down such acretions of power among workers and reestablishing its own command over them more securely.
It is easy enough to see how the analysis of the division of labor can be extended to the sphere of reproduction: who does what in housework, schoolwork, and all other work in the production and reproduction of labor power. The applicability of the concepts of technical composition, value composition and organic composition to the sphere of reproduction is not so obvious because the commodity being produced (labor power) is not one on which a profit is realized in its sale. However, we can reason analogically and see that, for example, the modern household (at least in the developed world) has a much higher technical composition of capital than its more ancient counterpart, e.g., it has more "capital" per worker --washingmachines instead of scrub buckets, food processors instead of knives, vaccuum cleaners instead of brooms. Or, students now use computers instead of slide rules, use on-line catalogs rather than card files, use sophisticated laboratory equipment instead of simpler such tools, and so on. Similarly, the analysis of class composition can be easly applied to the analysis of the hierarchies of power in the home or in school --to the analysis of patriarcal/wage domination over unwaged women and children, to the analysis of professoral/wage domination over unwaged students. Thus too the concept of poltical recomposition focuses our attention on the struggles which challenge such hierarchies: women's movement, child rights movement, student movements. Finally, we can see capitalist interventions into such struggles, such as Reagan's social agenda calling for an end to abortion and the return of women to their traditional role in the home as a kind of social decomposition designed to restore the subordination of consumption and life to reproduction.