Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 09:40:39 -0600 (CST)
From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
Subject: RE: AUT: Labor and labor power (was:marx question)


On Mon, 17 Dec 2001, jbrandon wrote:

> Thanks for your comments Harry.  I still do not understand however why you
> wish to maintain a rigid distinction between abstract labour and labour power.
>  As I see it, labour power can only be based on abstract labour, since is
> without a pre-defined essential form.


It's just that "abstract labor" and "labor power" are two different
concepts for two different things. Abstract labor refers to an aspect of
labor --one aspect of work done under capitalism, while labor power refers
to the ability and willingness to work, to do some kind of concrete labor
--labor that will have, as one of its aspects that quality designated by
the term "abstract labor." I guess you might say I'm just being a
Marxologist here demanding we stick to Marx's terminology and definitions
of terms. But I'm not. I am persuaded that these really are two quite
different things: the ability and willingness to work (labor power) is not
the same as that dimension of work itself designated by the term "abstract
labor", i.e., that aspect of any and every form of concrete labor (that
produces a profitable commodity) which is that it provides the same
opportunity to capital to impose work and thus to organize and
subordinate life to itself.

Now I agree that to a considerable degree labor power is "without a
pre-defined essential form", at least in the sense that the "ability and
willingness to work" usual includes a kind of general discipline and need
to do any old kind of work. But this can also be overstated. Vis a vis
schooling for instance, in general I tend to emphasize the centrality of
conditioning and inculcation of discipline, including self-discipline,
whereby spontaneous little humans are gradually converted to people who
will do what they are told, how they are told, when they are told, etc.,
ie., prepared for waged labor, or subordinate unwaged labor. But it is
also true that there are concrete skills taught (and sometimes learned)
such as the use of specific languages (Americans are trained to take
orders in english not Russian or Chinese) and that is certainly a
"pre-defined" form, even if not the essential one. So labor power is not
entirely "abstracted" from specific skills, a condition of tabla rasa.

This said I would agree that it only
makes sense to talk about "labor power" (the ability and willingness to
work) in general under the conditions of capitalism and thus under the
conditions in which it also makes sense to talk about "abstract labor,"
that is to say that no matter what the form of concrete labor it all
basically serves the same capitalist purpose: social control.

<snip>
> But is Polanyi's story so much different in this instance from Marx's?

No, his story is not so different; indeed as I understand it Polanyi was a
Marxist turned Polanyist. I wasn't criticizing, just labeling. I like a
lot of Polanyi even tho he talks about "market exchange" instead of
capitalism. His work is invaluable --not only on pre-capitalist society
but for envisioning post-capitalist society. I use his stuff in my
courses.

> It is
> true that at one point in Capital a distinction is made (by Engels) between
> precapitalist 'work' and 'labour', but the terminology is not maintained
> throughout Marx's writings (though a German speaker might correct me on this).

I think Engels is completely wrong on this point. I don't think there is
any difference at all between work and labour. I see both as designating
the same kind of human activity under capitalism. (And here, I guess I
should point out, I differ from Marx because he does use the term "labor"
generically to talk about non-capitalist social relations. I think that
when he does so, he violates his own methodological position inthe
introduction to the Grundrisse, i.e.,that we must recognize that all
concepts are historically specific. So in the example you give below, he
talks about labour in non-capitalist societies.

>  For example, "In both cases [i.e. free petty landownership and communal
> landed property] individuals behave not as labourers but as owners - and
> members of the community who also labour.  The purpose of this labour is not
> the creation of value, although they may perform surplus labour in order to
> exchange it for foreign labour, i.e. for surplus products."  - Precapitalist
> Economic Formations

In the above example he feels free to use the concept labour but not that
of value to analyze these "precapitalist" formations. I would use neither.

> Both Polanyi and Marx held that money and commodity trading existed only "in
> the pores of feudal society", therefore exchange value did not dominate the
> regulation of production.  Customs, feudal ties played a much greater role.

Yes. As I said, I think Polanyi's work is a great complement to Marx's.

<snip> >

> True, there remains a concrete dimension to labour and to labour power also
> (e.g. concrete skill and willingness), as you point out, but there is an
> abstract dimension as well under capitalism.  Namely what is primarily
> purchased is the workers' time.  But time is nowhere to be seen.

Yes, there is an "abstract dimension" to labour --that is what is
designated by the term "abstract labor". And I would agree  (see
above) that there is something like an "abstract dimension" to labour
power as well, but these are not the same. As for time, well time is to be
seen in the doing, I would say, either the concrete time of concrete
labor or the socially necessary (average) labor time that measures
the substance of value "abstract labor". ("Abstract labor" is the
substance of value; socially necessary labor time
is the measure of value; exchange value is the form of value.)

<snip>

> On the contrary, in terms of merchant capital, unequal exchange is the norm.
> This is why it is generally organised as as monopolies, such as Hudson's Bay
> Co. and supported by the state.  Even the putting out system relied on
> territorial control.  Marx only intended his theory of surplus value to apply
> to industrial capitalist society, to capital in full bloom as he called it.
> Even there, in England, he was well aware that it continued (and continues)
> to be supported by various forms of unequal exchange.

Unfortunately, the above is mere assertion, not argument. It does not
demonstrate the contention. Like I said, while Marx clearly
understood the existence of unequal exchange his theory of exploitation
sets it aside. The issue is whether or not that theory is applicable to to
situations in which capital commands labor not by paying for labour
power with a wage but through another form of exchange.

> The merchant capitalist is not in a position to control or even calculate
> accurately the quantity of time spent on a product, all he alienates is the
> product itself- a concretion of a certain quantity of labour.  So yes, it does
> matter if the labour being commanded is in house or out sourced since in the
> one case the labour is controlled directly, and is purchased as an abstract
> capacity to labour.  In the other, all that is purchased is the labour itself
> in a certain form, e.g. so many pelts, yards of textile, designer jeans, etc.

While I agree "it matters" whether the form of command is through the wage
or through a manipulated exchange, it "matters" whether labor is commanded
directly or indirectly, I disagree that it changes the
essential character of the relationship. The merchant in a putting-out
system doesn't need to calculate the quantity of time spent on the a
product. The merchant spends money on inputs and pays for output at rates
that guarantee a profit. But it remains true that that manipulated
exchange must be such as to guarantee the survival of the workers, i.e.,
be equal to the value of their labor power, or they will die. It was only
when the capitalist formation of factories and powerloom production
lowered the socially necessary labor time that the terms of exchange of
capital with home, hand-loom weavers resulted in the value received by the
latter falling below the value of their labor power --and they did starve.
But whether the labor of weavers was commanded by capital in factories or
in the home, it was still labor commanded, labor from which surplus value
was extracted, it was labor being accumulated in a very capitalist way.

The same is true for the more recent period of the "hollow corporation"
or, as the Italians say, the fabrica diffusa, or diffused factory. As
modern capitalists have diffused their machinery into homes and coordinate
production with vans instead of conveyor belts,they continue to extract
surplus value, they continue to command labor, they continue to
subordinate people's lives to work and surplus work.

In both the putting-out system and in the modern fabrica diffusa much more
is alienated than the product. In both cases the capitalist commands labor
and thus the labor is alienated, the product is alienated, the relations
among workers are alienated and they are alienated from their species
being because their will is subsumed to that of the capitalist.

> The abstract character of labour power is an important element.  It is by the
> nature of it being abstract that it becomes a commodity of variable value.

I would put it the other way around: that it is through the process of
primitive accumulation in which people are forced to sell aspects of
their lives that labor power emerges as a commodity and hence as this
process generalizes the labor realized takes on more and more of an
"abstract" quality. Early on in capitalism only a few forms of concrete
labor are commanded (mostly in the textile, food production and ship
building industries etc). But as more and more of "production" and more
and more people are subordinated to capital, as firms rise and fall, as
industries rise and fall, as labor is forced to be more and more mobile,
to adapt and learn new skills (however minimal), it makes more and more
sense to see that no matter what the form of concrete labor there is a
common "abstract", essential element, and thus that "abstract labor" is
one characteristic of all concrete labors. As I argued before, one can
say that "labour power" is abstract in the limited sense that peoples'
ability and willingness to work is shaped through the process of
reproduction to
prepare them for various kinds of work. But this preparation only becomes
truly general in the modern period of mass schooling. Prior to that most
workers, especially in industry, apprenticed and learned specific skills.
As is well known, even in the present period the degree of skill
specificity of labor power is still so great that many older workers have
great difficulty finding different kinds of jobs if their production sites
are closed down for any reason. Clearly the degree of "abstractness"
involved in labor power may vary enormously. But the common aspect of all
concrete labors, designated by the term 'abstract labor', has no such
variation. Either a particular kind of concrete labor can be used by
capital to impose work, or it cannot. The only variation is quantitative
through the product cycle, the rise and fall of products and hence of the
concrete labors that produce them.

> Under the putting out system, the merchant makes a contract for x yards of
> cloth at y pence per yard.  Under industrial capitalism, the labour power
> itself is purchased, at z shillings per day.  Although the productivity
> of the
> out worker may vary for reasons of weather or quality of equipment, this does
> not generally affect the merchant.  These matters however are of central
> importance to the purchaser of labour power.

These are differences associated with the different forms of command and
reasons for which capital passed from the "formal subordination of labor
to capital" to the "real subordination of labor to capital" --but, and
this is what you have to see, whether "formal" or "real" both are forms of
the "subordination of labor to capital."

> The real subsumption of labour, as I understand it, involves not only the
> capitalist control of the process of production, but also involves capital in
> the process of reproducing the worker, hence state education, importing cheap
> grain etc.

Not in Marx. What differentiated "real" from "formal" subordination was
the takeover and control of the labor process itself, its reshaping
through organization and through changes in technology. As Marx explains
in chapter 23 on simple reproduction for the most part, even at this
stage, capital leaves the reproduction of the worker to the worker. The
systematic intervention of capital in reproduction comes with the success
of workers in freeing time from waged work, thus the formation of public
schooling, etc. Now things like cheap grain, sure, as in the abolition of
the corn laws, but that was just aimed at undercutting rents and raising
profits, not in the management of reproduction per se. The post-Marx rise
of the "social factory" of systematic capitalist intervention in the
managing of reproduction as well as production might better be
characterized as the "real subsumption of society."

> So long as subsumption is merely formal, the adequate provision
> for the workers is not always the norm.  As a result, out sourced workers
> often do starve.  Or their standards of living, and hence the normal value of
> their labour is progressively eroded as Marx showed to be the case throughout
> the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries (a point Polanyi conveniently passes
> over).

These things even happen with waged labor and do not differentiate it.
Remember the need to reproduce a given set of workers is always
conditioned by the availability of other workers. Whereever and whenever
cheap labor can be had the value of labor power can be kept so low that a
worker's life is short --as was the case in England throughout the 18th
and 19th Centuries as Irish, etc. were pitted against English workers, or
with Southern slavery during the slave trade. So the observation about
capital having to pay the full cost of labor power to guarantee its
reproduction must be modified to this extent --whether the labor power
commanded is commanded and exploited directly through the wage or
indirectly through exchange.

> A third possibility is that capital pays less then the full value of
> reproducing the worker, providing wages only for the productive portion
> of the
> worker's life cycle: e.g. immigrant women who home-work in Canada and US.

The above statement seems to confuse what particular capitalists pay and
what capital pays. If the women do not receive the full value of their
labor power (be it high or low) from capital, they starve. It is secondary
whether they receive this value from the capitalists for which they do
home work, or from their husband's (or other family member's) wage. If you
are saying that there employers don't pay for their earlier costs of
reproduction --before they immigrated-- that may be true enough, but
capital in some other incarnation had to have paid in some form or another
or they would not have been alive to immigrate! (Unless you assume that
they come from some space outside of capital --and I don't know many,
other than partial terrains of self-valorization.

<snip>
> But unless under hypnosis, we are under our own control, even under orders
> from capital.  This is entailed in the point Jan made that labour power
> is all
> the capitalist can purchase.  The resistance that occurs on the microeconomic
> scale, for example slowing down, is an important contradiction in capitalism
> as I know you are aware.  The key problem for capitalists is that they are
> purchasing something abstract namely an unrealised potentiality to work, in
> the hope of turning it into something concrete actual labour, and from that
> real products.

Yes.

(Albeit with my previous caveats about the limited degree to which it
makes sense to say that labor power is abstract --and to repeat, a final
time, even to the degree labor power is abstract, it is NOT the same as
"abstract labor".

Now let me add something: I think it IS important to point out this degree
of "abstractness" of labor power, i.e., this degree to which what is being
formed is an undifferentiated ability and willingness to work. I wouldn't
go calling labor power abstract, but  after this discussion I think
that when I lay out the meaning of "labor power" it may prove helpful
to use the terminology of "abstract" and "concrete" when
discussing the components or dimensions of labor power.

In looking back over my discussion of chapter
6 of volume I of Capital on the "buying and selling of labor power",
<http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/357ksg06.html>
I think that I will expand the discusson of the "definition" of labor
power to include more of the things we have discussed here --I usually
discuss them in class lectures but in the light of this discussion I think
I'll beef up the text. This has been useful. Thanks.)

H.

>
> Josh
>
>

............................................................................
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Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
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............................................................................



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