File spoon-archives/marxism-intro.archive/marxism-intro_1997/97-02-04.192, message 59


Date: Mon, 23 Dec 1996 01:06:40 +0000
From: Hugh-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: M-INTRO: The illegitimacy of capitalism


Roger wrote:

>I took Hans' class through the Internet this past session, and, although I
>entered the class with an individualist bias, which I tried to hold in check
>out of concern for being seen as a capitalist propagandist, I still see
>enough about a collective approach that appeals to me so that I wished I had
>been able to go into more depth with some of the material in the class.  I
>was especially overwhelmed by the section which seemed to have an
>interminable number of different ways a commodity could be valued.  But I
>especially like Marx's way of analyzing things down to their root, and I
>wished I had understood it better.

He went on to have another chew at the bone which has been choking him all term:

>In case not everyone is too busy with holiday activities, I will ask the
>most basic question I currently have:  While first admitting to not having a
>particularly thorough knowledge of history, I do not see how capitalism can
>be regarded as illegitimate if all capitalists did was to offer workers an
>opportunity they would not have otherwise had.  It seems like it would have
>to be shown that capitalists hindered workers' other options somehow.  Or
>does the illegitimacy of capitalism depend on what I would call "negative
>externalities across time," in that, even if, at capitalism's outset,
>workers had all their alternatives to working for capitalists intact but
>chose to work for capitalists because it was their best opportunity, their
>very choosing to work for capitalists destroyed these other alternatives for
>future workers?

There are one or two ways of seeing things here that are begging the question.

For instance, seeing humanity as either capitalists or workers and nothing
else, predisposes an observer to discount other options.

The "opportunity" Roger mentions the capitalists offering the workers is
presumably that of taking employment, earning a wage and staying alive. But
it took thousands of years of class society developing through slavery and
feudalism before the breadwinning activities of the primary producers were
at the mercy of capitalists. Before this people were usually born into a
direct and unquestioned relationship of participation in the means of
production -- as serfs, subsistence farming members of a despotic community
or whatever. They were part of the means of production. Before capitalism
could take over, these ties had to be destroyed and people had to be
alienated from the means of production so they could confront them as
"free" agents, alienated from any immediate relationship with the means of
production. To do this required an enormous collective effort on the part
of the bourgeoisie and its allies, usually the absolute monarchs (allied
with the bourgeoisie against the nobility). Marx details this process in
Capital with plenty of references to the gory legislation against
vagabondage etc that was used to "encourage" the poor to work for
starvation wages.

In other words, the other "alternatives" weren't given much of a chance to
develop.

More to the point perhaps is the huge divide between the exploiters in
society and the exploited. Under capitalism, taking a job working for wages
is a sure-fire way to exclude yourself from ever getting a commanding
position in relation to the means of production. Wages provide subsistence
and little more, very often less. This won't build anyone the capital
needed to own and run a business. Consider how much in hock to banks even
sizable firms are.

No, the workers ended up as workers because their alternative was
starvation. Just look at the modern examples of this in the urbanization of
the postwar period. Subsistence farmers were driven off the land and into
the cities, where they had to work as wage slaves, beg or starve.
Historically speaking, such alternatives as producing enough food for
yourself and your immediate family have been wiped out. What remains of
this alternative is a petty-bourgeois dream in rich countries.


So, Roger is putting the question in the wrong way. The illegitimacy of
capitalism doesn't reside in the behaviour of the capitalists towards the
workers as individuals, and it doesn't have anything to do with the
mediation of employment -- if employment is a monopoly of a certain class
in society, then it will be mediated by that class by definition.

The illegitimacy of capitalism lies in the economic relationship between
the buyer and the seller of labour power.

The seller of labour power gets the value of the labour power -- what it
cost to  form and preserve the working capacity of the body involved.

The buyer gets the *use* of the labour power, which includes its magic
product -- labour.

The labour produced by labour power is a value greater than the value of
the labour power itself.

The illegitimacy of capitalism consists in the appropriation of this value
by the purchaser of labour power rather than by the owner of labour power.
It consists in the monopoly control of value in society by a limited group
of owners of the means of production, rather than by the joint application
of the labour of society to the needs of society on the basis of collective
agreement among the owners of labour power.

In Roger's case, the block he experienced against absorbing Marx's ideas on
value and the labour theory of value is directly related to the social
consequences of admitting its validity. Society is run for profit, and if
this profit is in fact nothing but unpaid labour extracted from the
workforce by deceit and compulsion, then the whole motive force of
capitalist society is exposed as criminal.

This is a frightening prospect for a lot of people socialized by family,
school and public opinion to affirm the foundations of our capitalist
society.

The solution is to bite the bullet and accept that capitalist society is
based on fraud and violence, and build alternative communities of
socialization where things are seen for what they are.

This means revolutionary Marxist political parties or groups on their
periphery where Marxist ideas can be discussed and absorbed in a comradely
spirit providing insulation from the constantly cracking whips of the
slavedrivers and the incessant banshee wailing of the bourgeois propaganda
machine.


Cheers,

Hugh




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