Date: Tue, 26 Jul 1994 23:21:34 -0400 (EDT)
From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com>
Subject: formal & real domination


I'm curious about the phrase 'real subsumption of labor under capital.' 
I'm familiar with formal and real domination from the writings of Jacques 
Camatte in his journal _Invariance_. Camatte, formerly associated with 
the Bordigist current of ultraleft communism, broke with Marxism about 
1968, but has retained a number of Marxian elements in his thinking. I'm 
aware that formal/real domination of capital originated in Marx's 
analysis (Vol I of _Capital_, yes?), but I wonder if Camatte uses these 
terms in the same sense that Marxists do. He speaks of real domination 
as the victory of the capitalist mode of production over all rivals and 
its constitution as a material community (the "community of capital") 
having destroyed and supplanted previous human communities. The real 
domination of capital, in his view, was completed in the West by the time 
of the Second World War (the tendency toward various forms of state 
capitalism--fascism, New Deal, etc.) but in other parts of the 
world--Russia, China, India--capital reigns only as formal domination. 
>From what I understand, Marx was describing, already in the 19th century, 
the passage from formal subsumption of labor (domestic manufacture) to real 
subsumption (large-scale industry) in England. But Camatte and some 
other renegades from an ultraleft or councilist background talk about the 
post-1945 period as the true epoch of 'real domination.' What can you 
people add to these concepts?

--Alex Trotter


     ------------------