Date: 	Thu, 13 Nov 1997 02:23:13 -0800
From: bhandari-AT-phoenix.princeton.edu (Rakesh Bhandari)
Subject: M-I: From 'class' to 'pathology': workers against history


Jim B wrote:

"Whatever convoluted arguments these political economists may make about
level of exploitation in relation to organic composition of capital, etc.,
etc., thus trying to prove that the majority indstrial worker in the rich
countries like the US and UK is far more "exploited" than is the black or
brown day laborer in these countries and the billions of working people in
the Third World."

I want to suggest that it is quite true that the most efficient producer is
the most exploited. Now it is less and less true that those working with
those most or best capital are only in the first world or that even when
so, they are white or male. But this is not what I want to get at here.

If the quantity of use values produced by the modal producer per unit of
time (say an hour) determines what counts as a social labor hour (say the
"average" is  40 yds of cloth per hour by a powerloom), then it follows
that until through the generalisation of his technique he becomes the modal
producer,  a more efficient producer actually performs more social labor
hours ( say someone with a very powerful loom, using unshreddable synthetic
materials, which allows him  to produce in one hour 80 yds of cloth).

Since in bourgeois society the metric is a social labor hour, it follows
that the most efficient producer actually has actually put in twice as many
social labor hours as a result of the greater quantity of use values he has
produced...even if he has put in the same number of abstract units of time:
The "Newtonian" interval of abstract, homogeneous units of time is
irrelevant.

This is not a scholastic distinction.  If it were not the case that the
most efficient producer does actually produce more value by performing more
hours of social labor, then there would be no way to understand the race to
increase productivity and therewith value and most importantly  surplus
value.

Jim, it does not follow that the most efficient producer may well be the
most exploited producer: he will have worked after all the most social
labor hours. You may point out to me that this leads to the paradox that
the producer who has put in the most social labor hours may work fewer of
those Newtonian units of abstract time. And I point out this is irrelevant
to the measure of value. Marx also clearly thought so if you mind to read
the chapter on the national differences in wages.

(this post is of course inspired by Postone's Dialectic of Labor and Time,
I hope I haven't messed it up too bad.)

It also follows that if the least efficient producer labors for a duration
of more units of abstract time, while in that time not producing as many
use values as the modal producer does in say an average working day (say a
handweaver who produces only 20yds of cloth in one hour), this "backward"
producer has actually put in fewer social labor hours and produced less
value--a little more than half as much if he put in more abstract units of
time than the modal powerloomer.  The market will thus punish the
handweaver unless he can win some protection from it. At the most basic
level, this is part of what Alan Freeman was getting at (I believe) in his
critique of imperialist domination of the world market.

Rakesh





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