File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-02.144, message 54


Date: Sat, 1 Feb 1997 19:36:24 -0500 (EST)
From: Andrew Wayne Austin <aaustin-AT-utkux.utcc.utk.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Dialectics of Time


On Sat, 1 Feb 1997, rakesh bhandari wrote:

> It would seem that by capitalist social relations, Andrew means here
> private property and market relations. While Andrew seems to suggest that
> capitalist production has become rationalized and organized, market and
> exchange relations remain a source of anarchy and irrationality.  

I mean by capitalist social relations the question of capital ownership
and surplus appropriation. The manipulation of time under socialism would
reduce the amount of necessary labor-time and free individuals up for more
creative pursuits. Under capitalist relations individuals find the
manipulation of time increasing the rate of exploitation and increasing
absolutely the size of the surplus labor population. I regard this as in
turn increasing alienation.

Rationalization at the point of production can be associated with
irrational effects at other points of commodity circulation. For example,
rational behavior based on maximizing profits at the point of production
of food, such as the destruction of surplus food production, can result in
the irrational outcome of hungry individuals not being fed. Markets still
have a measure of chaos. Under monopoly capital, and now intensifying and
consolidating transnationalization of productive forces, some markets have
and are stabilizing. There obviously still exists labor-intensive
competitive markets in operation under global capital, and these sectors
are becoming transnationalized as well (a movement from the periphery back
into the core as wages have equalized). 

> Moishe Postone suggests that Sohn-Rethel may have understood capitalist
> production, the organization of work and its growth trajectory as
> expressions of neutral technical requirements. More broadly, Postone
> attempts to reconceptualize value theory as not fundamentally  a critique
> of market relations but as a critique of a determinate mode of production,
> dominated by temporal abstractions (it seems that Postone himself spent a
> lot of time studying the development of time-keeping devices all the way
> back to medieval church bells).   I have only glanced over the last few
> days' mail at this point, but I think that Siddharth has argued that
> Sohn-Rethel may have focused on the exchange process.

As suggested by rakesh, Postone is concerned with the labor process itself
(vis-a-vis social domination) and not exclusively markets and property
relations. Postone takes his critique to its logical conclusion and argues
that industrial processes are not conducive to proletarian emancipation.
Although I haven't devoted a tremendous amount of time to interpreting
Postone's work, and I don't want to get bogged down here in particulars
(parts of his argument are very interesting), it appears that his argument
leans towards Marcusean formulations. As my post would indicate, I am a
bit more optimistic, siding with Marx regarding the progressive features
of capitalism as important in the development of the productive forces to
a level conducive (I want to hedge here and use neither terms "sufficient"
or "necessary") to proletarian transformation of the social order.

I also want to call attention to another work regarding time as an
independent variable: Eric Alliez *Capital Times* (1996). I have examined
this book superficially, but from my initial look at it, it appears fairly
interesting (despite its poststructuralist flavor). 

Peace,
Andrew



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