Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 23:13:15 -0400 (EDT) From: Alex Trotter <uburoi-AT-panix.com> Subject: formal & real domination (more) I went digging through my collection of Camatte's writings, published and unpublished (I was in correspondence with him, and have gathered English translations of his work for an anthology to be published by Autonomedia, probably sometime in 1995) and took another look at _Capital and Community_, which he wrote in the mid-1960s. In that piece, heavily laden with quotations from Marx, he discusses formal and real subsumption. Another aspect of the distinction between them worth mentioning is the association of absolute surplus-value (based on length of the working day) with formal subsumption and relative surplus-value (based on revolutionization of technology,etc.) with real subsumption. Also, under formal domination of capital, the human being (the worker) remains semi-independent in the face of capital, and variable capital outweighs fixed capital. It's under real domination that fixed capital becomes dominant, and that's what starts the tendential fall in the profit rate. Camatte, to answer Donna Jones's question, sees the period between the world wars as the transition between formal and real domination (although it certainly seems that capitalism was moving in that direction throughout the 19th century). He also sees real subsumption in an expanded sense, not unlike Negri's concept of the "social factory," that goes beyond the immediate process of production. In a note of 1972, Camatte explains: "Thus it is no longer merely labor, a defined and particular moment of human activity, that is subsumed and incorporated into capital, but the whole life-process of man." And I guess that goes for culture too. --Alex Trotter ------------------
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005