Capital, Chapter 7:

1
Capital, Chapter 7

• The Labor Process
• the Valorization Process

2
Structure of Chapter

• Section 1 The Labor Process (in general)
• Section 2 Valorization (in capitalism)

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The Labor Process in General

• Generic discussion (a-historical)
• Labor Process three elements
• a) workers using
• b) tools to transfrom
• c) non-human nature
• Humans transforming nature
• humans active, have will
• nature passive, no will

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Questionable Assumptions

• assumption that generic discussion is possible
• concept of labor itself historically determined
• assumption that only humans have will
• plenty of evidence that much of rest of nature
  also has will in some sense, to some degree
• Hegelian, Enlightenment tradition
• anthropocentric perspective, destructive

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Objectification

• In the labor process workers, as active subjects,
  exercise their will in order to
• appropriate nature
• transform it
• embue products with aspect of themselves
• Product is objectification of workers
  subjectivity, individually collectively
• Humanity makes nature part of itself

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Living the Dead

• As active subject, Marx treats workers as
  living
• As passive objects, Marx treats tools raw
  materials as dead
• Labor process necromancy, raising the dead
• Labor life giving, creative process

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Labor as self-realization

• Worker acts according to own will
• So, worker realizes individual self as subject in
  world
• Worker objectifies self in product, concreteness
• Labor is social, collective
• So, worker realizes self as member of a community
  in the world

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Self vis à vis Collectivity

• Marx In your enjoyment or use of my product I
  would have the direct enjoyment both of being
  conscious of having satisfied a human need by my
  work, that is, of having objectified mans
  essential nature, and of having thus created an
  object corresponding to the need of another mans
  essential nature. I would have been for you the
  mediator between you and the species . . .

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• in the individual expression of my life I
  would have directly created your expression of
  your life, and therefore in my individual
  activity I would have directly confirmed and
  realized my true nature, my humanm nature, my
  communal nature. Our products would be so many
  mirrors in which we saw reflected our essential
  nature.

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Other forms of self-realization

• Some have seen Marxs analysis of work as
  specificity of what it is to be human
• But, we can also read it as an analysis of ONE
  way to be human
• His concern with reduction of work shows his
  awareness of other forms of self-realization
  replacement of labor value by disposable time as
  measure of wealth

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Sec 2 The Valorization Process

• Valorization labor process within capitalism,
  ...P... within entire circuit
• Hired labor, working under capitalist control,
  producing products which are sold and on which a
  profit is realized, so that the whole process can
  be carried out again on a larger scale.
• i.e, M - C(LP,MP) ...P... C - M.M - etc.

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Valorization

• Quantitative aspect
• focus in this chapter
• turns out to be major qualitative aspect
• Other Qualitative aspects
• focus in 1844 Manuscripts
• well return to this afterwords

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Quantitative Aspect Surplus Value

• In general terms investment M - C(LP, MP)
• In value terms
• Investment M C V
• C constant capital value that buys C
• V variable capital value that buys LP
• Criterion of success
• Total value must C V S M
• S surplus value M - M

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Surplus Value Greed

• Usual critical reading S profits
• Profits desired for personal enrichment
• S motive of capitalist activity investment to
  make money to get rich
• Evidence
• top CEOs make millions
• socially irresponsible speculation
• USSteel takeover of Marathon Oil

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Surplus Value Social Service

• Usual apology profits create jobs
• Capitalism as gift-giving (G.Guilder)
• S M - M profits (?)
• ? is reinvested as new M
• which creates more jobs, output

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Surplus Value Surplus Labor

• Political reading of surpus value?
• Substance of value abstract labor
• Abstract labor labor as Ks social control
• Surplus value surplus abstract labor surplus
  social control
• S ? more jobs, but more jobs means more
  social control

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Gothic Metaphors - 1

• MarxCapital is dead labor, which, vampire like,
  lives only by sucking living labor, and lives the
  more, the more it sucks.
• Sucking living labor imposing work

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Gothic Metaphors - 2

• Marx Were-wolf hunger for surplus value
• Shelly Frankenstein
• Dr. Frankenstein life giving worker (Sec. 1)
• Monster product turned against creator (Sec. 2)

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Qualitative Aspects Alienation

• Valorization ever more labor
• Ques what kind of labor?
• Ans Alienated Labor
• Valorization involves transformation in the
  meaning of work for those engaged in it
• Instead of self activity, it becomes an activity
  imposed from the outside
• This imposition has negative consequences

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Kinds of alienation

• 1. Labor itself is alienated
• 2. Product is alienated
• 3. Workers are alienated from each other
• 4. Workers are alienated from species being

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1. Alienated labor

• Capitalist control means lack of control for
  workers
• Instead of executing their own wills, they
  execute those of the capitalists
• They do not choose, but are told what to do, how
  to do it, at what rythmn, etc.
• From using tools, they find themselves
  increasingly subordinated to machines

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Alienated Labor in Factory

• Early on capitalists annex workers who still
  control, manage their work
• Later they take control of work by gathering
  workers in factories
• Capitalists reorganize work to improve their
  control, extract more labor, more surplus labor
• E.g., Taylorism separation of manual mental
  labor

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Alienated Labor in School

• Schools sites of learning??
• Learning ? following your curiosity
  intellectual nose, ? self realization of desires
• Schools activity organized from outside
• Students told what to do and how to do it
• Learning schoolWORK, homeWORK
• Schools disciplining of labor power

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2. Alienated product

• Before product was objectification of workers
  wills
• In capitalism product is Ks design
• Moreover, capitalists OWN the product
• Capitalist control over product gives them
  control over workers, e.g., both C as MP and C
  as MS, machines, arcade games

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3. Alienated relationships

• Co-operation can be collaboration toward
  collectively defined ends
• But, capitalist control organizes division of
  labor for exterior goals in ways designed to
  divide and conquer
• Workers are pitted against workers
• Competition among individuals

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4. Alienation from Species-being

• For Marx species-being is what makes humans
  unique exercize of will, individually and
  collectively
• But by imposing work capitalists usurp will and
  deny it to workers
• K tries to reduce workers to drones, taking
  orders, doing what they are told
• Even with respect to creative work

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Alienation Attitude

• NB all of above ignores workers feelings and
  attitudes
• BUT, alienation often does imply estrangement in
  attitude as well as activity
• Workers resent imposition of work
• Workers resent competition, etc
• Workers estranged, lonely, or angry
• Frequently expressed in popular culture

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Sounds of Silence

• Hello darkness my old friend
• I've come to talk with you again
• Because the vision is softly creeping
• Left its seeds while I was sleeping
• And the vision that was planted in my brain
• Still remains within the Sounds of Silence

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In restless dreams I walked alone

• Down the streets of cobblestone
• Beneath the halo of the 8th Street lamp
• I turned my collar to the cold and damp
• When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon
  light
• that split the night and touched the Sounds of
  Silence

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And in the naked light I saw

• 10,000 people, maybe more
• People talking without speaking
• People hearing without listening
• People writing songs that voices never share
• No one dares
• Disturb the Sounds of Silence

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Fools said oh you do not know

• Silence like a cancer grows
• Hear my words that I might teach you
• Take my arms that I might reach you
• But my words like silent raindrops fell
• Echo the wells of silence

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And the people bowed and prayed

• To the neon god they made
• And the sign flashed out its warning
• In the words that it was forming
• And the sign said the words of the prophets
• Are written on the subway walls,
• tenement halls
• Disperse the Sounds of Silence.

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Sounds of Silence

• Simon Garfunkel,
• Sounds of Silence, 1965 in Collected Works
• Columbia, 1990,
• CD 45322

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Revolt Against Alienation

• Workers subvert labor process, introduce their
  own modifications, reappropriate it
• Workers directly appropriate output, on the job
  and off
• Workers elaborate networks of collaboration
  outside and against K div of L
• Workers assert their own species-being either
  constructively or destructively, on job or off

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Alienation of Capitalists?

• Capitalists get to command
• Capitalists get to exercise THEIR wills
• Products belong to them
• No alienation among capitalists?
• Capitalists only free humans?
• Capitalists as happy heros?

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Alienation of Capitalists

• Capitalists impose work on themselves
  --prototypical workaholics, accept/impose
  endless stress
• Capitalist will not free, but circumscribed by
  rules of game
• Capitalists alienated from workers due to
  antagonistic relationships, not heros but
  villains
• Capitalists alienated from other capitalists,
  must compete to survive
• Workaholism alienation from friendships, family
• Expressed in high popular culture

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Alienation of Capitalists in High Culture

• Shakespeare
• Shylock in Merchant of Venice
• Alienated from daughter
• Richard Wagner
• Das Rheinegeld
• Reine maidens warn against gaining gold and
  losing love

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Alienation of Capitalists in Popular Culture

• In literature
• J. Austins Mansfield Park
• C. Dickens Dombey And Son
• H. Melvilles Moby Dick
• In song
• 60s Simon Garfunkels Richard Cory
• 80s Explosives, Come Clean

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Richard Cory

• They say that Richard Cory
• owns one half of this whole town
• with elliptical connections
• to spread his wealth around
• born into society
• a banker's only child
• he had everything a man could want
• power, grace and style

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(chorus)

• But I work in his factory
• and I curse the life I'm livin
• and I curse my poverty
• and I wish that I could be
• oh I wish that I could be
• oh I wish that I could be
• Richard Cory

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The papers print his picture

• almost everywhere I go
• Richard Cory at the opera
• Richard Cory at the show
• and the rumours of his parties
• and the orgies on his yacht
• Oh he surely must be happy
• With everything he's got

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(repeat chorus)

• But I work in his factory
• and I curse the life I'm livin
• and I curse my poverty
• and I wish that I could be
• oh I wish that I could be
• oh I wish that I could be
• Richard Cory

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He freely gave to charity

• he had the common touch
• and they were grateful for his patronage
• and they thanked him very much
• so my mind was filled with wonder
• when the evening headlines read
• Richard Cory went home last night
• and put a bullet through his head

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(repeat chorus)

• But I work in his factory
• and I curse the life I'm livin
• and I curse my poverty
• and I wish that I could be
• oh I wish that I could be
• oh I wish that I could be
• Richard Cory

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Paul Simon Art Garfunkel,

• Sounds of Silence, 1965
• Collected Works, 1990
• CD 45322

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