It's often argued that capitalism values choice and equality, and that demand yields value, not labour. But that may not be the whole story, and things may not be as equitable as they appear.
According to the labour theory of value, for example, value in the context of capitalism is primarily determined by the socially necessary labour time required for a commodity's production, which is then sold by the average or market value. So a commodity's value, which is qualitatively expressed by its use-value, is quantitatively expressed via its exchange-value, its price being a measure of its value against a particular money-form. Demand for a commodity, its degree of usefulness in fulfilling a want or need, is only one aspect of its value.
From this perspective, what a person receives in payment isn't the full value of their labour power due to an inherent inequality in capitalist social relations between capital and labour. This seed of inequality, however, is easily obscured, as are capitalist social relations and the origin of profit, which from the Marxist perspective arises out of the division of the workday into necessary labour and surplus labour. But since all labour appears as paid labour, it's easy to argue that capital's role in the production process and demand's role in the process of exchange is the source of value (essentially separating capital as an independent and autonomous factor of production) despite the actual complexity of capitalist production and distribution, completely obscuring labour's contribution in the creation and realization of profit.
But as David Harvey illustrates in Limits to Capital, part of Marx's critique in Capital details precisely how the contradictions inherent within the capitalist mode of production produces a fundamental contradiction between the equality presupposed by exchange and the inequality via the exploitation of labour required to gain profit. So from the very onset, the kernel of inequality is already present within our political-economic system. And that inequality is the basis for much of the struggle between capital and labour and how surplus value is distributed.
On the one hand, workers are, in principle, "free to sell their labour under whatever conditions of contract (for whatever length of working day) they please" (30), which highlights the equality, freedom, and individuality characterizing exchange relations, recalling both Aristotle's argument that "exchange cannot take place without equality" and Marx's argument that "the circulation of commodities requires the exchange of equivalents" (19).
However, workers must also compete against one another in the labour market, where capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), and who more often than not dictate the duration and conditions of labour workers must accept or else risk privation while seeking something better, putting workers at a disadvantage on an individual level. (28-30) (One of the main reasons I favour some kind of universal basic income is that it has the potential to empower workers, decommodify labour-power by helping free workers from absolute dependence on wage labour for subsistence, and enlarge the nonmarket social economy.)
The expansion of value in this process occurs via the production of surplus value by capitalists who employ wage labour, a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the added value incorporated in production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else (42-3). And this is important because this is the point where the surplus value created in the labour process is appropriated by capitalists who are forced, due to the coercive laws of competition, to internalize the profit-seeking motive to purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), i.e., how they transform money (M) into commodities (C) and then back into money plus a surplus (M + ∆M), the added value being the result of the additional amount of labour time capitalists can extract/contract out of the worker in excess of what it takes for them to produce the value of the wages they receive.
More broadly speaking, however, workers generally seek (and one could rightly even say are compelled) to purchase commodities with the money they earn through their role in the production of commodities (C-M-C); and through the maintenance and reproduction of the working class (primarily through their role as consumers of commodities), the reproduction of capital is created. Surplus value, then, is produced via the production process and realized via market exchange, where workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.) (56).
One of the practical as well as philosophical issues I have with the capitalist mode of production, then, is the potential exploitation inherent within the system itself, which in its most extreme (and therefore most visible) forms can be found in things like prison labour and sweatshops, but according to the LTV is a characteristic of all forms of wage labour under capitalism.
In the Marxist sense, at least, exploitation refers to the worker's lack of ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour. (That's why Marx defined slavery, feudalism, and capitalism as exploitative systems of production, i.e., in each, the producers/workers have no ownership and/or distributive control over the surplus created by their labour). In this sense, exploitation is an inherent part of the capitalist mode of production, which in turn, ties into Marx's theory of alienation.
It's rather complicated, and I don't fully understand everything Marx wrote on the subject as much of it is very abstract, but in short, exploitation is the idea that the capitalist profits far more from a worker's labour than the worker does, and it doesn't really matter whether it's voluntary or not. Moreover, this type of social relationship ultimate debases labour and impedes our positive development as a species.
Adam Smith et al. assumed that labour creates wealth (surplus value). But according to Marx, in a capitalist system, labour itself becomes a commodity, an object that's bought and sold on the market. Moreover, due to private ownership of the means of production, the product of the worker's labour doesn't legally belong to them (alienation), nor does the surplus value their labour creates (unpaid labour), which is kept by the capitalist. Consequently, the product of the worker's labour becomes a commodity that's divorced from the labour expended on its production, thereby obscuring the social relationship between producer and consumer (commodity fetishism).
Furthermore, the employer has the ability to increase their profit exponentially by reinvesting the surplus value extracted from the worker's labour into their company while the labourer is forced to spend their (more often than not) meager wages on the necessities of life such as food, clothing, shelter, etc.
For Marx, our ability to produce things, especially our means of subsistence, is what sets us apart from other animals. In his view, this ability to produce objects is a part of our essence as a human being. Put another way, Marx viewed human beings as productive creatures that, in the words of Jonathan Wolff, "are able to create according to our will and consciousness in a very elaborate way." But, as Wolff continues, "workers under capitalism, Marx thinks, very rarely have the opportunity to express these powers. So, Marx says, from a human being, the worker is reduced to an abstract activity and a stomach. So rather than being a human being able to express our essence, we are like little machines ourselves."
And I think understanding this point of view is integral to understanding an important part of Marx's critique of production under the capitalist system, which he argues not only estranges and alienates the worker's relationship to the products of their labour, but estranges and alienates the worker's relationship to the act of production itself.
In Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, Marx argues that under the capitalist system of production, the worker's labour becomes "external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore, he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and ruins his mind." As a consequence, the worker "only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself. He feels at home when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel at home. His labor is therefore not voluntary, but coerced; it is forced labor."
And when viewed from this perspective, it may become easier to understand why Marx saw labour within the context of capitalism as something debasing, particularly for the worker, and why it's ultimately an impediment to achieving self-realization as a species in the sense of resolving "the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species" that's characterized by the "positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement."
From an ethical standpoint, this inherently disparate relationship between capital and labour reminds me of a line from a letter written by Abigail Adams in the spring of 1776 to her husband: "I have sometimes been ready to think that the passion for liberty cannot be equally strong in the breasts of those who have been accustomed to deprive their fellow-creatures of theirs [referring to slave-holding Virginians]. Of this I am certain, that it is not founded upon that generous and Christian principle of doing to others as we would that others should do unto us."
And I think the same sentiment can easily be applied to capital in relation to the wage labourer, at least in the sense of how the latter is coerced under the capitalist mode of production to surrender their labour-power to the former in exchange for their means of subsistence, which is always less than what they actually produce, as well as all rights over the product of their labour.
In essence, from one point of view, both slavery and wage labour can be seen to infringe upon individual autonomy in their respective ways, with former more obviously so, but the latter no less potentially oppressive from the standpoint of labour. Friedrich Engels, in The Principles of Communism, compared the two social relations, writing: "The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence."
Moreover, the logic of the system, via what Marx termed the 'coercive laws of competition,' forces the hand of capital to exploit labour as much as it can; and at the same time, labour is coerced into the position of working for a wage and fighting for gains that capital quickly counter in an endless struggle punctuated by regular economic crises (these days better known as the 'business cycle'), creating continuous class antagonisms between capital and labour.
Hence much of what's historically been labelled as Marxism and/or socialism has been a search for practical as well as philosophical resolutions to these issues, which isn't to be found in things like equality of wealth or outcomes so much as the de-privatization (i.e., socialization) of opportunity and the weakening of class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of social relations unique to capitalism and other predominately exploitative systems.
As Marx wrote in The Poverty of Philosophy, "Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist." And Marx's focus, along with socialist movements in general, is in attempting to answer the question of how to liberate society from the suffering and alienation engendered by these political-economic contradictions and inequalities by changing the material conditions that support it.
In the words of Erich Fromm, "[Marx's] concept of socialism is the emancipation from alienation, the return of man to himself, his self-realization," a goal that's ultimately achievable via "the liberation of man from a kind of work which destroys his individuality, which transforms him into a thing, and which makes him into the slave of things" (Marx's Concept of Man). And to do that, to realize this form of socio-economic liberation, the working class needs to theoretically "unravel the constraints to the free application of human labour" (to steal a phrase from Harvey) in an effort to practically "'expropriate the expropriators' and so to achieve the conscious reconstruction of the value form through collective action" (38).
Thursday, November 28, 2013
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
my first concert
Holy shit, Morbid Angel is coming next week and playing the entire Covenant album to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its release! Even though I have to work the next day at 6:30am, there's no way I'm missing this.
Covenant is one of the best death metal albums ever made. The first time I heard "Rapture" on Headbanger's Ball, I was young, rebellious, and fancied myself quite the little Satanist. It was the heaviest, most Satanic thing I'd ever heard, and I couldn't get enough of it. I listened to that tape religiously. When I heard they were playing at the Falcon Club in Hamtramck, MI, I knew I had to go.
It was the summer of 1994. I was all of 15 and crashing on my friend Mike's couch at the time. I remember that we had to go to some record store or another to buy the tickets. My friend Larry was there too. We convinced somebody to give us a ride down there that night (maybe Jerry, or someone's mom?). I remember waiting outside and hearing them rehearse "Sworn to the Black." It gave me chills. I was so fucking excited I was practically twerking with anticipation.
The place was small and more like a basement than a venue. 7,000 Dying Rats and Crowbar opened. Then Morbid Angel came on and fucking destroyed my face with the heaviest riffs and most devilish lyrics my relatively innocent, young ears had until that time heard (this was before the interwebs, mind you). It was one hell of a show. I headbanged so hard I'm pretty sure I gave myself whiplash.
After the show, we tried to find a ride back, but ended up having to catch a taxi instead. Unfortunately, we could only afford to make it halfway back to Mike's place, walking the last 5 or 6 miles in the dead of night.
And that's how Morbid Angel became the first band I ever saw live.
Covenant is one of the best death metal albums ever made. The first time I heard "Rapture" on Headbanger's Ball, I was young, rebellious, and fancied myself quite the little Satanist. It was the heaviest, most Satanic thing I'd ever heard, and I couldn't get enough of it. I listened to that tape religiously. When I heard they were playing at the Falcon Club in Hamtramck, MI, I knew I had to go.
It was the summer of 1994. I was all of 15 and crashing on my friend Mike's couch at the time. I remember that we had to go to some record store or another to buy the tickets. My friend Larry was there too. We convinced somebody to give us a ride down there that night (maybe Jerry, or someone's mom?). I remember waiting outside and hearing them rehearse "Sworn to the Black." It gave me chills. I was so fucking excited I was practically twerking with anticipation.
The place was small and more like a basement than a venue. 7,000 Dying Rats and Crowbar opened. Then Morbid Angel came on and fucking destroyed my face with the heaviest riffs and most devilish lyrics my relatively innocent, young ears had until that time heard (this was before the interwebs, mind you). It was one hell of a show. I headbanged so hard I'm pretty sure I gave myself whiplash.
After the show, we tried to find a ride back, but ended up having to catch a taxi instead. Unfortunately, we could only afford to make it halfway back to Mike's place, walking the last 5 or 6 miles in the dead of night.
And that's how Morbid Angel became the first band I ever saw live.
democrats aren't a leftist alternative
From ThinkProgress:
State Rep. Uses Sledgehammer To Destroy Homeless People’s Possessions
Yet more attacks on the homeless by the state; and this time it's a literally attack on their personal possessions by a Democratic representative from Hawaii, where lawmakers have apparently also "approved $100,000 over the next two years to offer one-way flights off the islands to any of the state’s estimated 17,000 homeless persons."
In my opinion, this is just another example of a growing trend of state-led attacks on the property-less that crosses party lines. If you're not a housed wage labourer, you're shit out of luck. In Portland, for example, which has a Democratic mayor, city council, and is in a Democratic state, they've repeatedly tried to pass sit-lie ordinances in order to harass homeless people by forcing them to move if they're sitting or lying anywhere downtown at anytime; and they've also taken to filling in underpasses with boulders to prevent homeless people from sleeping there at night.
When push comes to shove, Democrats are just as friendly towards the down-and-out as Republicans because each is a political representation of capital and holds bourgeois property relationships sacrosanct. The former may pay lip service to the working class by supporting things like food assistance programs and Social Security (when they're not busy joining with Republicans to cut social programs at any rate), but many of these programs themselves are really just means of subsidizing cheap labour, not ending poverty, de-privatizing opportunity, or weakening the class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of capitalist social relations.
Like most forms of government centered around private property rights, the basic principle behind the establishment of our form of representative democracy had more to do with the ruling elites wanting to protect the small minority of property owners (including themselves) from the majority of the property-less than anything else (e.g., see Federalist No. 10). While they may disagree on the approach, both Democrats and Republicans are capitalist parties that seek to keep the capitalist profit-making machine rolling.
Case in point. Despite all of his left-leaning rhetoric prior to the 2008 election, Obama is (and always was) clearly a centrist, and he has no qualms about courting capital, from talking about lowering the corporate tax rate and how his healthcare boondoggle is based on "the private marketplace" (which is a handout to private insurance companies as opposed to a not-for-profit, single payer system like they have in most other advanced industrialized nations), to bragging about the vitality of the stock market (until the next crisis of overaccumulation, of course).
He's right when he says he's no socialist; and the Democratic Party isn't a leftist alternative. In fact, they're essentially the conservatives of yesteryear.
State Rep. Uses Sledgehammer To Destroy Homeless People’s Possessions
Yet more attacks on the homeless by the state; and this time it's a literally attack on their personal possessions by a Democratic representative from Hawaii, where lawmakers have apparently also "approved $100,000 over the next two years to offer one-way flights off the islands to any of the state’s estimated 17,000 homeless persons."
In my opinion, this is just another example of a growing trend of state-led attacks on the property-less that crosses party lines. If you're not a housed wage labourer, you're shit out of luck. In Portland, for example, which has a Democratic mayor, city council, and is in a Democratic state, they've repeatedly tried to pass sit-lie ordinances in order to harass homeless people by forcing them to move if they're sitting or lying anywhere downtown at anytime; and they've also taken to filling in underpasses with boulders to prevent homeless people from sleeping there at night.
When push comes to shove, Democrats are just as friendly towards the down-and-out as Republicans because each is a political representation of capital and holds bourgeois property relationships sacrosanct. The former may pay lip service to the working class by supporting things like food assistance programs and Social Security (when they're not busy joining with Republicans to cut social programs at any rate), but many of these programs themselves are really just means of subsidizing cheap labour, not ending poverty, de-privatizing opportunity, or weakening the class antagonisms and hierarchies arising out of capitalist social relations.
Like most forms of government centered around private property rights, the basic principle behind the establishment of our form of representative democracy had more to do with the ruling elites wanting to protect the small minority of property owners (including themselves) from the majority of the property-less than anything else (e.g., see Federalist No. 10). While they may disagree on the approach, both Democrats and Republicans are capitalist parties that seek to keep the capitalist profit-making machine rolling.
Case in point. Despite all of his left-leaning rhetoric prior to the 2008 election, Obama is (and always was) clearly a centrist, and he has no qualms about courting capital, from talking about lowering the corporate tax rate and how his healthcare boondoggle is based on "the private marketplace" (which is a handout to private insurance companies as opposed to a not-for-profit, single payer system like they have in most other advanced industrialized nations), to bragging about the vitality of the stock market (until the next crisis of overaccumulation, of course).
He's right when he says he's no socialist; and the Democratic Party isn't a leftist alternative. In fact, they're essentially the conservatives of yesteryear.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
rtw legislation is anti-union, not pro-worker
Right-to-work legislation aimed specifically at public sector unions is on track to hit Oregon ballots next November. While the term 'right-to-work' may sound positive, it actually represents a way for corporations and pro-business advocates to further weaken already beleaguered labour unions by cutting off their primary source of funding while at the same time forcing them, via existing state law, to represent workers who opt out of paying any union dues or 'fair share' fees.
As with any other kind of organization that provides benefits to its members, labour unions depend on a steady source of funds to function effectively. Workers who work at a unionized workplace pay a small percentage of each check to the union since they benefit from the terms of the union-negotiated contract said union has worked out with the employer. That money goes directly towards funding union representation in the workplace, as well as political advocacy in the broader political sphere if authorized by the worker.
By allowing workers to opt out of paying dues while still mandating that the union represent them, you essentially drain the union of one of its most vital resources. In fact, this very argument is made by the Chamber of Commerce, a strong proponent of right to work legislation across the country, when demanding members of the organization to pay dues or else lose access to the benefits they provide. In a letter responding to the Owensboro Building and Construction Trades Council's inquiry about continued membership benefits without paying dues, for example, the local Chamber of Commerce wrote that "the vast majority of the Chamber's annual revenues come from member dues, and it would be unfair to the other 850+ members to allow an organization not paying dues to be included in member benefits." Yet that's exactly what they want unions to do.
Proponents frame this bill as promoting choice, freedom, and even civil rights, basically arguing that unions force workers who don't want to be members to pay fair share fees, which they say restricts the individual worker's freedom to not pay such fees. Hence right-to-work legislation is portrayed as 'freeing' workers from the oppression of 'greedy' labour unions that force workers to financially contribute to their operation.
This argument, however, ignores the fact that most employers restrict an individual worker's freedom far more than the payment of union dues does, and they certainly don't seem all that keen to support anything that gives workers more freedom from the oppression of their 'greedy' employers. (It's also interesting to note that the same people often argue workers have the freedom to find a different job if they don't like the one they have and/or their employer, yet they curiously fail to extend this argument to workers having the freedom to find a different job if they don't want to work at a unionized workplace or pay union dues.)
Moreover, it neglects the fact that these dues are in a sense an obligation of the worker's, i.e., it's a payment on the part of the worker to the union for services rendered (the union's advocacy, protection, the contract it helped to negotiate that the worker benefits from, etc.), an exchange most pro-business advocates hold sacred in every other circumstance.
In essence, they're using legislation to restrict the freedom of unions to negotiate and agree to certain contract provisions in order to make unionized workers more free, which is kind of like giving with one hand and taking with the other. If this proposed measure passes, it could undermine their means of collecting funds and severely hamper their ability to lobby lawmakers on behalf of working Oregonians, giving corporate lobbyists an unfair political advantage and hurting workers in the long run.
As with any other kind of organization that provides benefits to its members, labour unions depend on a steady source of funds to function effectively. Workers who work at a unionized workplace pay a small percentage of each check to the union since they benefit from the terms of the union-negotiated contract said union has worked out with the employer. That money goes directly towards funding union representation in the workplace, as well as political advocacy in the broader political sphere if authorized by the worker.
By allowing workers to opt out of paying dues while still mandating that the union represent them, you essentially drain the union of one of its most vital resources. In fact, this very argument is made by the Chamber of Commerce, a strong proponent of right to work legislation across the country, when demanding members of the organization to pay dues or else lose access to the benefits they provide. In a letter responding to the Owensboro Building and Construction Trades Council's inquiry about continued membership benefits without paying dues, for example, the local Chamber of Commerce wrote that "the vast majority of the Chamber's annual revenues come from member dues, and it would be unfair to the other 850+ members to allow an organization not paying dues to be included in member benefits." Yet that's exactly what they want unions to do.
Proponents frame this bill as promoting choice, freedom, and even civil rights, basically arguing that unions force workers who don't want to be members to pay fair share fees, which they say restricts the individual worker's freedom to not pay such fees. Hence right-to-work legislation is portrayed as 'freeing' workers from the oppression of 'greedy' labour unions that force workers to financially contribute to their operation.
This argument, however, ignores the fact that most employers restrict an individual worker's freedom far more than the payment of union dues does, and they certainly don't seem all that keen to support anything that gives workers more freedom from the oppression of their 'greedy' employers. (It's also interesting to note that the same people often argue workers have the freedom to find a different job if they don't like the one they have and/or their employer, yet they curiously fail to extend this argument to workers having the freedom to find a different job if they don't want to work at a unionized workplace or pay union dues.)
Moreover, it neglects the fact that these dues are in a sense an obligation of the worker's, i.e., it's a payment on the part of the worker to the union for services rendered (the union's advocacy, protection, the contract it helped to negotiate that the worker benefits from, etc.), an exchange most pro-business advocates hold sacred in every other circumstance.
In essence, they're using legislation to restrict the freedom of unions to negotiate and agree to certain contract provisions in order to make unionized workers more free, which is kind of like giving with one hand and taking with the other. If this proposed measure passes, it could undermine their means of collecting funds and severely hamper their ability to lobby lawmakers on behalf of working Oregonians, giving corporate lobbyists an unfair political advantage and hurting workers in the long run.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
iran's economy crippled by sanctions - why that's not necessarily a good thing
What I took away from this press conference is: the US is the arbitrator of who gets to have what in the world, and we've crippled Iran's day-to-day economy, making life for the average Iranian extremely fucking difficult. To many, is seems like the idea of imposing economic sanctions against other regimes in order to get them to comply with our demands is ethically justified, even if those sanctions ultimately just hurt the people and not the regime. I, on the other hand, disagree and find them to be barbaric to say the least since the whole point of sanctions is to hurt the people enough for them to pressure/topple said regimes.
Moreover, ethicalities aside, they have the potential to engender the opposite in the sense that regimes can use the suffering caused by sanctions to strengthen their power and justify their actions, turning the people against economic aggressor. "See? They're hurting 'you' by these sanctions; they're really 'your' enemy despite their rhetoric of freedom and justice and we'll fight to defend 'you.'" Meanwhile, innocent people go hungry and the leaders of these regimes usually stay in power (e.g., North Korea, Iran, etc.).
The issue of Iran's nuclear developments is a serious and complex one, though, and it's easy to see why the US is so concerned about the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. For one, it might instigate a nuclear arms race in the Middle East (although everyone knows Israel has them and it hasn't done so). Iran also has a pretty negative image in general, and has been accused of supporting terrorism. In addition, it'd almost certainly bring the tension between Iran and Israel to a boiling point and potentially trigger a preemptive military strike by Israel, which has repeated threatened to do so, most likely with our support. It may even trigger a military response by the US itself.
I think that attacking Iran would be an extremely rash and stupid idea, however. For one, it'll only reinforce the image of America as an international bully attacking yet another predominately Muslim nation, which will further radicalize people against us, particularly in the Middle East even if our ally, Israel, is the actual aggressor since everyone knows that we share close tactical relations and supply them with arms. This could not only instigate a fresh wave of terrorist attacks, but a full on global conflict. Moreover, both China and Russia are important trading partners with Iran, which would further strain relations between us and them, and could quite possibly instigate another cold war-style military buildup, especially with China as they won't appreciate our or our allies' militaristic forays into one of their main petroleum watering holes.
I'm honestly a bit confused about what's truly going on, though. The rhetoric coming out of Israel and from certain talking-heads in Washington make it seem as if a nuclear-armed Iran is immanent. However, according to statements made by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta last year, Iran isn't developing nuclear weapons at the moment, only a 'nuclear capability.' While vague as to what that means, it could very well be for energy independence, as Iran asserts. If it's true that they're not currently developing nuclear weapons, what the hell is this really all about then? US hegemony? Oil? A fear of an energy-independent Iran?
This whole thing also raises the question, Do we have the right to prevent a country from developing nuclear energy simply because we're afraid they may one day use that technology to produce nuclear weapons? Obviously we think we do, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world necessarily agrees; and this is where even more future conflicts could potentially arise now that the nuclear cat is out of the bag and more and more countries begin to pursue this technology (North Korea being the newest addition to the club). Also, countries who don't necessarily want to pursue nuclear weapons may still not appreciate the US declaring who can do so.
In addition, we hear a lot of talk about the threat from Iran; but we rarely hear about our threat to Iran, from our role in the 1953 CIA-organized coup that overthrew the democratically-elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, to our placement of military bases in the Middle East that literally surround Iran. So even assuming that all this talk about Iran pursuing nuclear weapons is true, can you really blame them? I mean, looking at it objectively, if I were them, I'd probably be a little paranoid about the US and want some kind of strategic deterrent, too.
All in all, it's a fucking mess, and I don't foresee an amiable solution any time soon. In fact, I see this biting us in the ass like most of our repeated interventions in the Middle East in the last 60 years or so. At some point, however, I think we, as a nation, need to take a critical look at our role in the world and the problems our fairly aggressive foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, has caused. We're not as innocent in this as we may like to believe, and we can't continue to ignore the fact that our actions have a serious impact in a world where we're one of the dominant powers.
To use the old cliché, with great power comes great responsibility; and frankly, we haven't been all that responsible with our 'superpower' status, especially when it comes to trying to make the Middle East submit to our regional hegemony. Unlike Spider-man, who realized early on, after the death of his uncle, that his selfish pursuits and flagrant use of his superpowers had serious and often tragic consequences, we haven't seemed to grasp that lesson yet, and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. And while mistakes in some shape or form will always be made, we have to own up to ours and truly learn from them if we're ever going to help put an end to this self-perpetuating cycle of violence.
Moreover, ethicalities aside, they have the potential to engender the opposite in the sense that regimes can use the suffering caused by sanctions to strengthen their power and justify their actions, turning the people against economic aggressor. "See? They're hurting 'you' by these sanctions; they're really 'your' enemy despite their rhetoric of freedom and justice and we'll fight to defend 'you.'" Meanwhile, innocent people go hungry and the leaders of these regimes usually stay in power (e.g., North Korea, Iran, etc.).
The issue of Iran's nuclear developments is a serious and complex one, though, and it's easy to see why the US is so concerned about the possibility of Iran developing a nuclear weapon. For one, it might instigate a nuclear arms race in the Middle East (although everyone knows Israel has them and it hasn't done so). Iran also has a pretty negative image in general, and has been accused of supporting terrorism. In addition, it'd almost certainly bring the tension between Iran and Israel to a boiling point and potentially trigger a preemptive military strike by Israel, which has repeated threatened to do so, most likely with our support. It may even trigger a military response by the US itself.
I think that attacking Iran would be an extremely rash and stupid idea, however. For one, it'll only reinforce the image of America as an international bully attacking yet another predominately Muslim nation, which will further radicalize people against us, particularly in the Middle East even if our ally, Israel, is the actual aggressor since everyone knows that we share close tactical relations and supply them with arms. This could not only instigate a fresh wave of terrorist attacks, but a full on global conflict. Moreover, both China and Russia are important trading partners with Iran, which would further strain relations between us and them, and could quite possibly instigate another cold war-style military buildup, especially with China as they won't appreciate our or our allies' militaristic forays into one of their main petroleum watering holes.
I'm honestly a bit confused about what's truly going on, though. The rhetoric coming out of Israel and from certain talking-heads in Washington make it seem as if a nuclear-armed Iran is immanent. However, according to statements made by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta last year, Iran isn't developing nuclear weapons at the moment, only a 'nuclear capability.' While vague as to what that means, it could very well be for energy independence, as Iran asserts. If it's true that they're not currently developing nuclear weapons, what the hell is this really all about then? US hegemony? Oil? A fear of an energy-independent Iran?
This whole thing also raises the question, Do we have the right to prevent a country from developing nuclear energy simply because we're afraid they may one day use that technology to produce nuclear weapons? Obviously we think we do, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world necessarily agrees; and this is where even more future conflicts could potentially arise now that the nuclear cat is out of the bag and more and more countries begin to pursue this technology (North Korea being the newest addition to the club). Also, countries who don't necessarily want to pursue nuclear weapons may still not appreciate the US declaring who can do so.
In addition, we hear a lot of talk about the threat from Iran; but we rarely hear about our threat to Iran, from our role in the 1953 CIA-organized coup that overthrew the democratically-elected Prime Minister, Mohammed Mossadeq, to our placement of military bases in the Middle East that literally surround Iran. So even assuming that all this talk about Iran pursuing nuclear weapons is true, can you really blame them? I mean, looking at it objectively, if I were them, I'd probably be a little paranoid about the US and want some kind of strategic deterrent, too.
All in all, it's a fucking mess, and I don't foresee an amiable solution any time soon. In fact, I see this biting us in the ass like most of our repeated interventions in the Middle East in the last 60 years or so. At some point, however, I think we, as a nation, need to take a critical look at our role in the world and the problems our fairly aggressive foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, has caused. We're not as innocent in this as we may like to believe, and we can't continue to ignore the fact that our actions have a serious impact in a world where we're one of the dominant powers.
To use the old cliché, with great power comes great responsibility; and frankly, we haven't been all that responsible with our 'superpower' status, especially when it comes to trying to make the Middle East submit to our regional hegemony. Unlike Spider-man, who realized early on, after the death of his uncle, that his selfish pursuits and flagrant use of his superpowers had serious and often tragic consequences, we haven't seemed to grasp that lesson yet, and continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. And while mistakes in some shape or form will always be made, we have to own up to ours and truly learn from them if we're ever going to help put an end to this self-perpetuating cycle of violence.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
common sense optimism
The other day, someone brought up an interesting quote from part two of Thomas Paine's 1776 pamphlet, Common Sense, attacking the notion of monarchy and hereditary forms of succession, and asked which came first, oppression as a result of wealth or oppression as means of accumulation? Paine writes:
To me, it seems as if Paine is taking the position that riches (i.e., wealth inequality) came first in the form of "the distinctions of rich and poor" — which is a knowledge reminiscent of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis — and with it, the consequence of oppression, the latter rarely being the means of acquiring riches.
I'm a bit surprised Paine would take that position, though. For one, he seems to have grasped that property rights create a dispossessed class, and with it, the distinctions of rich and poor (which can be viewed as a legal form of state-backed oppression, and which evokes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's proposition in his 1754 work, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, that the establishment of property can be seen as the beginning of the evils of rivalry, competition, and the desire of profiting at the expense of others). In his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, for example, Paine proposed the radical idea of a basic income guarantee for all US citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."
Of course, he wrote that two decades after Common Sense. However, the oppression exhibited by the British government and the East India Company alone in their quest for, and acquisition of, riches was one of the primary motivations for the American Revolution, and something Paine and the other revolutionaries were well aware of at the time, so it makes me wonder if that statement wasn't more ideologically inspired than historically motivated. He was attacking the concept of monarchy and hereditary succession from both a biblical and historical perspective, after all.
It does raise the question, though, of which came first, inequality or oppression. Rather than a 'chicken or egg' scenario, however, I think it's more a case of chicken and egg, especially when talking about capitalism and bourgeois social forms.
On the one hand, we can see that riches/wealth inequality in the economic sphere is carried into the political sphere since the accumulation of profit on the part of capital/the wealthy in the form of money, which itself is a form of social power, gives capital/the wealthy (particularly as a class) a disproportionate political advantage. This, of course, puts poorer people and the working class at a disadvantage on a broader political level, whether via legislation or outright state violence, as the state itself is the political representation of capital, the social relation, that subsumes the capitalist class and working class alike, and which seeks to help resolve the reoccurring crises of overaccumulation that result from the intrinsic contradictions within the capitalist mode of production itself. From this point of view, oppression can be the consequence of riches.
Looking at the inverse, primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession, which are grosser forms of political-economic oppression, and economic exploitation stemming from a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the value incorporated in the production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else, which is a much subtler forms of oppression, are sources of riches in the form of means for the appropriation of surplus value by capital and the ruling class. From this point of view, oppression can be the means of riches (and in the case of primitive accumulation, it can even be argued that oppression in this form was the 'original sin' rather than riches).
So, looking at it this way, oppression can be both the cause and consequence of riches, and I think the relationship is reciprocal rather than causal (especially since I'm not a fan of first cause arguments). To use a Buddhist metaphor, it's as if two sheaves of reeds were to stand leaning against one another. If one were to pull away one of those sheaves of reeds, the other would fall; if one were to pull away the other, the first one would fall.
And this leads me to another thing that bothers me about this. As Paine infers in the opening sentence of his attack on monarchy, the idea of one being the consequence of the other essentially presupposes that there was a period in our evolution as a species when there was no oppression or inequality, a proverbial Garden of Eden in which neither was known until the arising of one, inequality and distinctions of rich and poor (due to the instigation of a wicked serpent, perhaps) begat the other, oppression.
I'm not convinced that such a time existed, however, and I think these things evolved in tandem throughout history, along with things like cooperation, generosity, and egalitarianism. Although, to be fair to Paine and the point he was trying to make about the existence of a more equal state of affairs prior to the existence of monarchy and hereditary succession, many of the more 'primitive' societies we've studied (i.e., hunter-gatherer societies) do seem to have more egalitarian social structures than we have in our more 'civilized' societies, which leads me to believe that our ancient ancestors may have had similar, egalitarian social structure, just not as idealized as they're sometimes made out to be.
In essence, I believe that, as a species, we're neither a perfect nor fallen creation; we're the product of material forces that have evolved into creative and producing beings, and through the social nature of that creative and productive activity, we collectively create our nature, our social consciousness, our reality. And because of this, we're not simply limited to a modern world characterized by oppression and distinctions of rich and poor dominated by an aristocracy of wealthy capitalists and moneyed corporations instead of kings.
It may seem like there's no alternative, that we've reached the 'end of history' and the final phase of our socio-cultural evolution; but I honestly think we have the capacity to create a world characterized by equality and material abundance in which things like distinctions of rich and poor and oppression truly become superfluous.
MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance: the distinctions of rich and poor may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and tho' avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.
To me, it seems as if Paine is taking the position that riches (i.e., wealth inequality) came first in the form of "the distinctions of rich and poor" — which is a knowledge reminiscent of the knowledge of good and evil in Genesis — and with it, the consequence of oppression, the latter rarely being the means of acquiring riches.
I'm a bit surprised Paine would take that position, though. For one, he seems to have grasped that property rights create a dispossessed class, and with it, the distinctions of rich and poor (which can be viewed as a legal form of state-backed oppression, and which evokes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's proposition in his 1754 work, Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, that the establishment of property can be seen as the beginning of the evils of rivalry, competition, and the desire of profiting at the expense of others). In his 1797 pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, for example, Paine proposed the radical idea of a basic income guarantee for all US citizens as compensation for "loss of his or her natural inheritance, by the introduction of the system of landed property."
Of course, he wrote that two decades after Common Sense. However, the oppression exhibited by the British government and the East India Company alone in their quest for, and acquisition of, riches was one of the primary motivations for the American Revolution, and something Paine and the other revolutionaries were well aware of at the time, so it makes me wonder if that statement wasn't more ideologically inspired than historically motivated. He was attacking the concept of monarchy and hereditary succession from both a biblical and historical perspective, after all.
It does raise the question, though, of which came first, inequality or oppression. Rather than a 'chicken or egg' scenario, however, I think it's more a case of chicken and egg, especially when talking about capitalism and bourgeois social forms.
On the one hand, we can see that riches/wealth inequality in the economic sphere is carried into the political sphere since the accumulation of profit on the part of capital/the wealthy in the form of money, which itself is a form of social power, gives capital/the wealthy (particularly as a class) a disproportionate political advantage. This, of course, puts poorer people and the working class at a disadvantage on a broader political level, whether via legislation or outright state violence, as the state itself is the political representation of capital, the social relation, that subsumes the capitalist class and working class alike, and which seeks to help resolve the reoccurring crises of overaccumulation that result from the intrinsic contradictions within the capitalist mode of production itself. From this point of view, oppression can be the consequence of riches.
Looking at the inverse, primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession, which are grosser forms of political-economic oppression, and economic exploitation stemming from a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the value incorporated in the production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else, which is a much subtler forms of oppression, are sources of riches in the form of means for the appropriation of surplus value by capital and the ruling class. From this point of view, oppression can be the means of riches (and in the case of primitive accumulation, it can even be argued that oppression in this form was the 'original sin' rather than riches).
So, looking at it this way, oppression can be both the cause and consequence of riches, and I think the relationship is reciprocal rather than causal (especially since I'm not a fan of first cause arguments). To use a Buddhist metaphor, it's as if two sheaves of reeds were to stand leaning against one another. If one were to pull away one of those sheaves of reeds, the other would fall; if one were to pull away the other, the first one would fall.
And this leads me to another thing that bothers me about this. As Paine infers in the opening sentence of his attack on monarchy, the idea of one being the consequence of the other essentially presupposes that there was a period in our evolution as a species when there was no oppression or inequality, a proverbial Garden of Eden in which neither was known until the arising of one, inequality and distinctions of rich and poor (due to the instigation of a wicked serpent, perhaps) begat the other, oppression.
I'm not convinced that such a time existed, however, and I think these things evolved in tandem throughout history, along with things like cooperation, generosity, and egalitarianism. Although, to be fair to Paine and the point he was trying to make about the existence of a more equal state of affairs prior to the existence of monarchy and hereditary succession, many of the more 'primitive' societies we've studied (i.e., hunter-gatherer societies) do seem to have more egalitarian social structures than we have in our more 'civilized' societies, which leads me to believe that our ancient ancestors may have had similar, egalitarian social structure, just not as idealized as they're sometimes made out to be.
In essence, I believe that, as a species, we're neither a perfect nor fallen creation; we're the product of material forces that have evolved into creative and producing beings, and through the social nature of that creative and productive activity, we collectively create our nature, our social consciousness, our reality. And because of this, we're not simply limited to a modern world characterized by oppression and distinctions of rich and poor dominated by an aristocracy of wealthy capitalists and moneyed corporations instead of kings.
It may seem like there's no alternative, that we've reached the 'end of history' and the final phase of our socio-cultural evolution; but I honestly think we have the capacity to create a world characterized by equality and material abundance in which things like distinctions of rich and poor and oppression truly become superfluous.
wealth inequality in america
The statistics in this video about wealth inequality are pretty shocking to many. For one, it creatively illustrates the fact that the top 1% alone controls about 40% of the total wealth of the US, while the bottom 80% only has 7% of that wealth shared between them, statistics that are a lot worse than people think they are. But the statistics themselves aren't the full story, and I think it's worth digging deeper to find out what that story is. I'm sure some will disagree with my particular answers, but the two main questions that I think need to be asked are: 'Why is there so much disparity when it comes to wealth distribution?' and 'Where does all that wealth come from in the first place?'
In answer to the latter, I think we need to begin by taking a broader look at history and the evolution of capitalism, which has succeeded in greatly increasing both wealth and the efficiency of commodity production. For starters, I think it's worth noting that much of the wealth we're talking about has its roots in theft and violence, i.e., the primitive accumulation of capital in the form of colonialism and imperialism. The initial 'start up' capital for many early capitalists and industrializing nations came from the expropriation and consumption of the labour and resources of other places, particularly large parts of Africa, the Americas, and Asia. And here I'm talking about everything from land grabs to slave labour. Today, we do similar things via more civilized methods such as sweatshops and the IMF, which forces countries experiencing economic instability to adopt certain favourable policies (to the US and Europe, at least) in exchange for financial loans, etc.
Wealth is also created via the capitalist mode of commodity production, which is why capitalism was a revolutionary mode of production that eventually supplanted feudalism. The logic of capitalism spurs both the production of surplus value (which is where profits come from) and constant evolutions in technology, and this has both positive and negative consequences. One positive is that capitalism has revolutionized production methods, and the drive for the accumulation of profit constantly pushes the development of new and labour-saving technologies. A negative is that the internal contradictions in the capitalist mode of production create crises that cause economic instability, and capitalist social relations are a major source of inequality.
I'd concede that some of the wealth inequality we're currently experiencing (at least in the West) is due to polices and laws that have weakened unions, eroded the minimum wage to the lowest level (in real terms) since the 1950s, put Wall Street’s toxic innovations ahead of workers, etc. Nevertheless, I'd strongly argue that a great deal of this inequality is a direct result of the way capitalism functions and the social forms (including the state) that that functioning engenders. I think our politics have always been 'sick' in the sense that they've always dominated by the interests of a privileged class of wealthy, ruling class elites — whether it's been the white, male landowners of the late 1700s or the 1% of today — and their ownership of the means of production and finance give them the means to appropriate the lion's share of wealth, whether created or simply expropriated from elsewhere (i.e., accumulation by dispossession).
This seed of inequality, however, is easily obscured, as are capitalist social relations and the origin of profit, which from the Marxist perspective, arises out of the division of the workday into necessary labour and surplus labour. But since all labour appears as paid labour, it's easy for the capitalist apologist to argue that capital is the source of value (essentially separating capital as an independent and autonomous factor of production) despite the actual complexity of capitalist production and distribution, completely obscuring labour's contribution in the creation and realization of profit.
But as David Harvey illustrates in Limits to Capital, part of Marx's critique in Capital details precisely how the contradictions inherent within the capitalist mode of production produces a fundamental contradiction between the equality presupposed by exchange and the inequality via the exploitation of labour required to gain profit. So from the very onset, the kernel of inequality is already present within our political-economic system. And that inequality is the basis for much of the struggle between capital and labour and how surplus value is distributed.
On the one hand, workers are, in principle, "free to sell their labour under whatever conditions of contract (for whatever length of working day) they please" (30), which highlights the equality, freedom, and individuality characterizing exchange relations, recalling both Aristotle's argument that "exchange cannot take place without equality" and Marx's argument that "the circulation of commodities requires the exchange of equivalents" (19).
However, workers must also compete against one another in the labour market, where capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), and who more often than not dictate the duration and conditions of labour workers must accept or else risk privation while seeking something better, putting workers at a disadvantage on an individual level. (28-30) (One of the main reasons I favour some kind of universal basic income is that it has the potential to empower workers, decommodify labour-power by helping free workers from absolute dependence on wage labour for subsistence, and enlarge the nonmarket social economy.)
The expansion of value in this process occurs via the production of surplus value by capitalists who employ wage labour, a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the value incorporated in the production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else (42-3). And this is important because this is the point where the surplus value created in the labour process is appropriated by capitalists who are forced, due to the coercive laws of competition, to internalize the profit-seeking motive to purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), i.e., how they transform money (M) into commodities (C) and then back into money plus a surplus (M + ∆M), the added value being the result of the additional amount of labour time capitalists can extract/contract out of the worker in excess of what it takes for them to produce the value of the wages they receive.
More broadly speaking, however, workers generally seek (and one could rightly even say are compelled) to purchase commodities with the money they earn through their role in the production of commodities (C-M-C); and through the maintenance and reproduction of the working class (primarily through their role as consumers of commodities), the reproduction of capital is created. Surplus value, then, is produced via the production process and realized via market exchange, where workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.) (56).
And that inequality in the economic sphere is further carried into the political sphere since the accumulation of profit on the part of capital in the form of money, which itself is a form of social power, gives capital (particularly as a class) a disproportionate political advantage, putting workers at a disadvantage on a broader political level. In addition, the more workers collectively resist the depredations of capital, the "more the capitalists are forced to constitute themselves as a class to ensure collectively that the conditions for progressive accumulation are preserved" (30). (And the state is primarily the political representation of capital, the social relation, that subsumes the capitalist class and working class alike, and which seeks to help resolve the reoccurring crises of overaccumulation that result from the intrinsic contradictions within the capitalist mode of production itself.)
Of course, one can always look at the numbers and argue that the massive wealth in the hands of the uber-rich is simply due to the amount of the proverbial pie being a lot bigger than in the past, and that the ends of increased wealth (assuming it's not just inflationary numbers we're talking about here) and evolutions in technology justify the means (which include a lot of ugly truths), especially from the relative comfort of the US, which has appropriated and expropriated a vast quantity of global wealth that's trickled down to its working class. But I think it's misleading to look at the size of the pie without also looking at how the slices are distributed and where the ingredients come from.
In answer to the latter, I think we need to begin by taking a broader look at history and the evolution of capitalism, which has succeeded in greatly increasing both wealth and the efficiency of commodity production. For starters, I think it's worth noting that much of the wealth we're talking about has its roots in theft and violence, i.e., the primitive accumulation of capital in the form of colonialism and imperialism. The initial 'start up' capital for many early capitalists and industrializing nations came from the expropriation and consumption of the labour and resources of other places, particularly large parts of Africa, the Americas, and Asia. And here I'm talking about everything from land grabs to slave labour. Today, we do similar things via more civilized methods such as sweatshops and the IMF, which forces countries experiencing economic instability to adopt certain favourable policies (to the US and Europe, at least) in exchange for financial loans, etc.
Wealth is also created via the capitalist mode of commodity production, which is why capitalism was a revolutionary mode of production that eventually supplanted feudalism. The logic of capitalism spurs both the production of surplus value (which is where profits come from) and constant evolutions in technology, and this has both positive and negative consequences. One positive is that capitalism has revolutionized production methods, and the drive for the accumulation of profit constantly pushes the development of new and labour-saving technologies. A negative is that the internal contradictions in the capitalist mode of production create crises that cause economic instability, and capitalist social relations are a major source of inequality.
I'd concede that some of the wealth inequality we're currently experiencing (at least in the West) is due to polices and laws that have weakened unions, eroded the minimum wage to the lowest level (in real terms) since the 1950s, put Wall Street’s toxic innovations ahead of workers, etc. Nevertheless, I'd strongly argue that a great deal of this inequality is a direct result of the way capitalism functions and the social forms (including the state) that that functioning engenders. I think our politics have always been 'sick' in the sense that they've always dominated by the interests of a privileged class of wealthy, ruling class elites — whether it's been the white, male landowners of the late 1700s or the 1% of today — and their ownership of the means of production and finance give them the means to appropriate the lion's share of wealth, whether created or simply expropriated from elsewhere (i.e., accumulation by dispossession).
This seed of inequality, however, is easily obscured, as are capitalist social relations and the origin of profit, which from the Marxist perspective, arises out of the division of the workday into necessary labour and surplus labour. But since all labour appears as paid labour, it's easy for the capitalist apologist to argue that capital is the source of value (essentially separating capital as an independent and autonomous factor of production) despite the actual complexity of capitalist production and distribution, completely obscuring labour's contribution in the creation and realization of profit.
But as David Harvey illustrates in Limits to Capital, part of Marx's critique in Capital details precisely how the contradictions inherent within the capitalist mode of production produces a fundamental contradiction between the equality presupposed by exchange and the inequality via the exploitation of labour required to gain profit. So from the very onset, the kernel of inequality is already present within our political-economic system. And that inequality is the basis for much of the struggle between capital and labour and how surplus value is distributed.
On the one hand, workers are, in principle, "free to sell their labour under whatever conditions of contract (for whatever length of working day) they please" (30), which highlights the equality, freedom, and individuality characterizing exchange relations, recalling both Aristotle's argument that "exchange cannot take place without equality" and Marx's argument that "the circulation of commodities requires the exchange of equivalents" (19).
However, workers must also compete against one another in the labour market, where capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), and who more often than not dictate the duration and conditions of labour workers must accept or else risk privation while seeking something better, putting workers at a disadvantage on an individual level. (28-30) (One of the main reasons I favour some kind of universal basic income is that it has the potential to empower workers, decommodify labour-power by helping free workers from absolute dependence on wage labour for subsistence, and enlarge the nonmarket social economy.)
The expansion of value in this process occurs via the production of surplus value by capitalists who employ wage labour, a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the value incorporated in the production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else (42-3). And this is important because this is the point where the surplus value created in the labour process is appropriated by capitalists who are forced, due to the coercive laws of competition, to internalize the profit-seeking motive to purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), i.e., how they transform money (M) into commodities (C) and then back into money plus a surplus (M + ∆M), the added value being the result of the additional amount of labour time capitalists can extract/contract out of the worker in excess of what it takes for them to produce the value of the wages they receive.
More broadly speaking, however, workers generally seek (and one could rightly even say are compelled) to purchase commodities with the money they earn through their role in the production of commodities (C-M-C); and through the maintenance and reproduction of the working class (primarily through their role as consumers of commodities), the reproduction of capital is created. Surplus value, then, is produced via the production process and realized via market exchange, where workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.) (56).
And that inequality in the economic sphere is further carried into the political sphere since the accumulation of profit on the part of capital in the form of money, which itself is a form of social power, gives capital (particularly as a class) a disproportionate political advantage, putting workers at a disadvantage on a broader political level. In addition, the more workers collectively resist the depredations of capital, the "more the capitalists are forced to constitute themselves as a class to ensure collectively that the conditions for progressive accumulation are preserved" (30). (And the state is primarily the political representation of capital, the social relation, that subsumes the capitalist class and working class alike, and which seeks to help resolve the reoccurring crises of overaccumulation that result from the intrinsic contradictions within the capitalist mode of production itself.)
Of course, one can always look at the numbers and argue that the massive wealth in the hands of the uber-rich is simply due to the amount of the proverbial pie being a lot bigger than in the past, and that the ends of increased wealth (assuming it's not just inflationary numbers we're talking about here) and evolutions in technology justify the means (which include a lot of ugly truths), especially from the relative comfort of the US, which has appropriated and expropriated a vast quantity of global wealth that's trickled down to its working class. But I think it's misleading to look at the size of the pie without also looking at how the slices are distributed and where the ingredients come from.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
some rambling thoughts on the magic mountain
Since I loved the book, I decided to rent Hans Geissendörfer's adaptation of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain the other night. As I watched it, it got me thinking that the contradiction between illness and working life in The Magic Mountain is, perhaps on an unconscious level, a reflection of the contradiction between the natural tendency towards an increase in non-work or leisure time (or as Karl Marx puts it in Capital, "time ... for the free development, intellectual and social, of the individual") arising from the technological advancements and socialization of labour spurred by capitalism and the capitalist class' own push to increase labour time in its collective drive for the accumulation of profit.
In essence, if one views the book from this perspective, the former can be seen as speaking to the underlying contradictions in the latter and the conflict it engenders in Hans Castorp's consciousness in the wake of German industrial development preceding WWI. From this point of view, then, Catorp's voracious interest in studying things like anatomy, astronomy, botany, physiology, etc. while a resident of the International Sanatorium Berghof isn't simply induced by, say, boredom, but more reminiscent of Marx's passage in The German Ideology concerning the liberation of the working class from the confinement of capitalist social relations:
Throughout his seven year stay, Castorp consistently fights against/ignores Ludovico Settembrini's constant push to return to the flatlands and begin his [productive] career as a ship builder. He even taunts Castorp by giving him the nickname 'engineer.' Castorp, despite his Protestant, middle-class upbringing, however, resigns to stay until 'well,' a vague designation that has seemingly little to do with his physical health and more to do with his mental well-being. He leaves only when forced to by the onset of WWI, not to assume his role as a surplus-producing proletariat.
In this, one can see in Castorp the Protestant work ethic clashing with what may very well be a simmering proto-communist consciousness (i.e., "a consciousness," in the words of blogger Jehu, "of the need for a fundamental revolution of society"), a conflict between the 'false consciousness' arising from what Herbert Marcuse describes as the ideology which "belongs to the established societal apparatus," being "a requisite for its continuous functioning and part of its rationality," and the proletarian consciousness "of common class situation" struggling to manifest itself.
Castorp ultimately rejects Leo Naphta's communistic terror, but seemingly dies on the battlefield in the first industrial/world war in the service of Settembrini's bourgeois republicanism, leaving the question of the resolution open. It leaves me to wonder if the resolution to this contradiction is the social emancipation of the individual via the emancipatory transcendence of capitalism—not through Naphta's peculiar authoritarian terror, but through a combination of the natural, material evolution of capitalism (i.e., the reduction of socially necessary labour to an absolute minimum) and a corresponding evolution in thought (i.e., a leap in the consciousness of the social producers leading to the abolition of the state and the global institution of the free association of individuals).
Although Mann's sympathies clearly lie with Settembrini and his bourgeois humanism/liberalism, I think Castorp's vacillation between the influences of Settembrini and Naphta reflects a vacillation in Mann's own consciousness as he transitioned from conservatism to liberalism in the course of writing the book, as well as foreshadowing the internal contradictions between his future advocacy of social democracy and his bourgeois-aristocratic views (e.g., democracy being a "justified demand from below" but even more beautiful when it's "good will, generosity, and love coming from the top down").
I think this approach to reading The Magic Mountain gives it an interesting dynamic, at any rate, which reflects the difficulties, in literary form, of seeing through the 'fetishism of the realm of appearances' and apprehending both the underlying dynamics of, and ideological justifications for, the political-economic system we currently live within.
In essence, if one views the book from this perspective, the former can be seen as speaking to the underlying contradictions in the latter and the conflict it engenders in Hans Castorp's consciousness in the wake of German industrial development preceding WWI. From this point of view, then, Catorp's voracious interest in studying things like anatomy, astronomy, botany, physiology, etc. while a resident of the International Sanatorium Berghof isn't simply induced by, say, boredom, but more reminiscent of Marx's passage in The German Ideology concerning the liberation of the working class from the confinement of capitalist social relations:
Further, the division of labour implies the contradiction between the interest of the separate individual or the individual family and the communal interest of all individuals who have intercourse with one another. And indeed, this communal interest does not exist merely in the imagination, as the "general interest," but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the individuals among whom the labour is divided. And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example of how, as long as man remains in natural society, that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but naturally, divided, man's own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic. This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now.
Throughout his seven year stay, Castorp consistently fights against/ignores Ludovico Settembrini's constant push to return to the flatlands and begin his [productive] career as a ship builder. He even taunts Castorp by giving him the nickname 'engineer.' Castorp, despite his Protestant, middle-class upbringing, however, resigns to stay until 'well,' a vague designation that has seemingly little to do with his physical health and more to do with his mental well-being. He leaves only when forced to by the onset of WWI, not to assume his role as a surplus-producing proletariat.
In this, one can see in Castorp the Protestant work ethic clashing with what may very well be a simmering proto-communist consciousness (i.e., "a consciousness," in the words of blogger Jehu, "of the need for a fundamental revolution of society"), a conflict between the 'false consciousness' arising from what Herbert Marcuse describes as the ideology which "belongs to the established societal apparatus," being "a requisite for its continuous functioning and part of its rationality," and the proletarian consciousness "of common class situation" struggling to manifest itself.
Castorp ultimately rejects Leo Naphta's communistic terror, but seemingly dies on the battlefield in the first industrial/world war in the service of Settembrini's bourgeois republicanism, leaving the question of the resolution open. It leaves me to wonder if the resolution to this contradiction is the social emancipation of the individual via the emancipatory transcendence of capitalism—not through Naphta's peculiar authoritarian terror, but through a combination of the natural, material evolution of capitalism (i.e., the reduction of socially necessary labour to an absolute minimum) and a corresponding evolution in thought (i.e., a leap in the consciousness of the social producers leading to the abolition of the state and the global institution of the free association of individuals).
Although Mann's sympathies clearly lie with Settembrini and his bourgeois humanism/liberalism, I think Castorp's vacillation between the influences of Settembrini and Naphta reflects a vacillation in Mann's own consciousness as he transitioned from conservatism to liberalism in the course of writing the book, as well as foreshadowing the internal contradictions between his future advocacy of social democracy and his bourgeois-aristocratic views (e.g., democracy being a "justified demand from below" but even more beautiful when it's "good will, generosity, and love coming from the top down").
I think this approach to reading The Magic Mountain gives it an interesting dynamic, at any rate, which reflects the difficulties, in literary form, of seeing through the 'fetishism of the realm of appearances' and apprehending both the underlying dynamics of, and ideological justifications for, the political-economic system we currently live within.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
from surplus value to the state as national capitalist: some rambling thoughts on marxist stuff
Every once in a while, I find the time to pick up David Harvey's Limits to Capital and read a chapter or two, which really impresses upon me the complexities of the capitalist mode of production, as well as my own rather simplistic understanding of that process. It's easy to forget that Marx's Capital describes the logic of capitalism in its totality, that his penetrative critique is much deeper than merely unequal employer/employee social relations.
Take, for instance, the production and realization of surplus value and profit. While the exploitation of an employee by an employer can be a source of surplus-value extraction at a specific point of production, and which can be a source of profit for said employer, Marx's analysis goes much further than this and details how the realization of surplus value and profit is often (and perhaps even primarily) realized via the whole process of capitalist commodity production.
Production and distribution themselves aren't discrete, autonomous spheres as they're sometimes treated; they are, in the context of capitalist society, part of an organic whole. Moreover, the expansion of value in this process occurs via the production of surplus value by capitalists who employ wage labour, a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the value incorporated in the production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else (42-3).
And this is important because this is the point where the surplus value created in the labour process is appropriated by capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition to purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), i.e., how they transform money (M) into commodities (C) and then back into money plus a surplus (M + ∆M), the added value being the result of the additional amount of labour time capitalists can extract/contract out of the worker in excess of what it takes for them to produce the value of the wages they receive.
More broadly speaking, however, workers generally seek (and one could rightly even say compelled) to purchase commodities with the money they earn through their role in the production of commodities (C-M-C); and through the maintenance and reproduction of the working class (primarily through their role as consumers of commodities), the reproduction of capital is created. Surplus value, then, is produced via the production process and realized via market exchange, where workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.) (56).
So it's not simply limited to a single exchange between capitalist and worker, but between the overall interaction between the capitalist and working classes as a whole. Distribution, then, can be seen as the mediation point between the creation of surplus value and its realization in exchange, which means that even national boundaries are no impediment to this process.
But within this process, there are a number of contradictions that give rise to imbalances and crises. And when due to these, both the mass of superfluous (i.e., unproductive) capital and labour increase in conjunction with efficiencies in production, they cause the rate of profit to fall and a shrinkage in the absolute mass of profit created, compelling capitalists to find ways to overcome this, whether through encouraging debt spending, the opening of new markets, the 'creative destruction' of superfluous capital (mostly through state consumption), or creating ways to increase the mass of profit that via evolutions (i.e., innovations) in the means of production and finance that, in turn, set up the conditions for further overaccumulation and crises.
From a Marxist perspective, I think these material conditions tend to affect and ultimately direct both domestic and foreign economic policies far more than political ideologies despite how these issues are often framed by the media or politicians. And this, in my opinion, goes a long way towards explaining, among other things, Washington's growing role as national capitalist a la Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific—and here I'm thinking specifically about Jehu's analysis of Washington's increasing role as manager of the national capital/surplus absorber on a global scale.
There's a silver lining to all of this, however. If we except the arguments of Engels and Jehu, then Washington's ever-growing role in managing the productive forces of society signals that the productive forces of society are developed enough, and the social nature of production pervasive enough, for the socialized character of the means of production to be given "complete freedom to work itself out," meaning a possible end to wage labour and the beginning of a new historical epoch.
Take, for instance, the production and realization of surplus value and profit. While the exploitation of an employee by an employer can be a source of surplus-value extraction at a specific point of production, and which can be a source of profit for said employer, Marx's analysis goes much further than this and details how the realization of surplus value and profit is often (and perhaps even primarily) realized via the whole process of capitalist commodity production.
Production and distribution themselves aren't discrete, autonomous spheres as they're sometimes treated; they are, in the context of capitalist society, part of an organic whole. Moreover, the expansion of value in this process occurs via the production of surplus value by capitalists who employ wage labour, a social relation in which the worker — who gives up their rights to control over the production process, the product of their labour, and the value incorporated in the production — receives the value of their labour power and nothing else (42-3).
And this is important because this is the point where the surplus value created in the labour process is appropriated by capitalists who are forced to internalize the profit-seeking motive due to the coercive laws of competition to purchase workers' labour time with the sole purpose being the accumulation of profit (accumulation for accumulation's sake), i.e., how they transform money (M) into commodities (C) and then back into money plus a surplus (M + ∆M), the added value being the result of the additional amount of labour time capitalists can extract/contract out of the worker in excess of what it takes for them to produce the value of the wages they receive.
More broadly speaking, however, workers generally seek (and one could rightly even say compelled) to purchase commodities with the money they earn through their role in the production of commodities (C-M-C); and through the maintenance and reproduction of the working class (primarily through their role as consumers of commodities), the reproduction of capital is created. Surplus value, then, is produced via the production process and realized via market exchange, where workers as producers and consumers give of themselves twice to capital—first as what's conventionally viewed as unpaid labour and second as wages for commodities (as well as things like rent, etc.) (56).
So it's not simply limited to a single exchange between capitalist and worker, but between the overall interaction between the capitalist and working classes as a whole. Distribution, then, can be seen as the mediation point between the creation of surplus value and its realization in exchange, which means that even national boundaries are no impediment to this process.
But within this process, there are a number of contradictions that give rise to imbalances and crises. And when due to these, both the mass of superfluous (i.e., unproductive) capital and labour increase in conjunction with efficiencies in production, they cause the rate of profit to fall and a shrinkage in the absolute mass of profit created, compelling capitalists to find ways to overcome this, whether through encouraging debt spending, the opening of new markets, the 'creative destruction' of superfluous capital (mostly through state consumption), or creating ways to increase the mass of profit that via evolutions (i.e., innovations) in the means of production and finance that, in turn, set up the conditions for further overaccumulation and crises.
From a Marxist perspective, I think these material conditions tend to affect and ultimately direct both domestic and foreign economic policies far more than political ideologies despite how these issues are often framed by the media or politicians. And this, in my opinion, goes a long way towards explaining, among other things, Washington's growing role as national capitalist a la Engels in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific—and here I'm thinking specifically about Jehu's analysis of Washington's increasing role as manager of the national capital/surplus absorber on a global scale.
There's a silver lining to all of this, however. If we except the arguments of Engels and Jehu, then Washington's ever-growing role in managing the productive forces of society signals that the productive forces of society are developed enough, and the social nature of production pervasive enough, for the socialized character of the means of production to be given "complete freedom to work itself out," meaning a possible end to wage labour and the beginning of a new historical epoch.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)