MARXISM and INFORMAL LABOUR Thomas Barnes
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Unfree Labor, Capitalism and Contemporary Forms of Slavery
Unfree Labor, Capitalism and Contemporary Forms of Slavery Siobhán McGrath Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, New School University Economic Development & Global Governance and Independent Study: William Milberg Spring 2005 1. Introduction It is widely accepted that capitalism is characterized by “free” wage labor. But what is “free wage labor”? According to Marx a “free” laborer is “free in the double sense, that as a free man he can dispose of his labour power as his own commodity, and that on the other hand he has no other commodity for sale” – thus obliging the laborer to sell this labor power to an employer, who possesses the means of production. Yet, instances of “unfree labor” – where the worker cannot even “dispose of his labor power as his own commodity1” – abound under capitalism. The question posed by this paper is why. What factors can account for the existence of unfree labor? What role does it play in an economy? Why does it exist in certain forms? In terms of the broadest answers to the question of why unfree labor exists under capitalism, there appear to be various potential hypotheses. ¾ Unfree labor may be theorized as a “pre-capitalist” form of labor that has lingered on, a “vestige” of a formerly dominant mode of production. Similarly, it may be viewed as a “non-capitalist” form of labor that can come into existence under capitalism, but can never become the central form of labor. ¾ An alternate explanation of the relationship between unfree labor and capitalism is that it is part of a process of primary accumulation. -
Harvey's Limits of Capital: Twenty Years After
On the Limits of Limits to Capital Bob Jessop Professor, Department of Sociology Lancaster University Copyright This online paper may be cited or briefly quoted in line with the usual academic conventions. You may also download it for your own personal use. This paper must not be published elsewhere (e.g. mailing lists, bulletin boards etc.) without the author's explicit permission. But please note that • if you copy this paper you must include this copyright note • this paper must not be used for commercial purposes or gain in any way, • you should observe the conventions of academic citation in a version of the following form: Bob Jessop, ‘On the Limits of Limits of Capital’, published by the Department of Sociology, Lancaster University at: http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/soc129rj.htm Harvey's magisterial text is a sustained attempt to develop the basic method, extend the substantive arguments, and overcome some of the theoretical limits of Marx's classic critique of political economy. Yet Limits to Capital has its own limits and these are often rooted in the limits of Capital itself. Let us recall that the latter is an unfinished text. In the 1857 outline of his future magnum opus, Marx stated his intention to write six 'books' (Marx 1973; cf. Harvey 1982: xiv). These would deal in turn with capital, landed property, wage-labour, the state, foreign trade, and the world market and crises. The chosen order of presentation corresponded to his method of analysis, which moved from abstract-simple objects to the reproduction of the totality as a concrete-in-thought. -
Marx on Absolute and Relative Wages
Munich Personal RePEc Archive Marx on absolute and relative wages Levrero, Enrico Sergio Roma Tre University, Department of Economics September 2009 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20976/ MPRA Paper No. 20976, posted 26 Feb 2010 06:51 UTC Marx on absolute and relative wages Enrico Sergio Levrero, Department of Economics, Roma Tre University∗ Introduction 1. The aim of this paper is to clarify some aspects of Marx’s analysis of the determinants of wages and of the peculiarity of labour as a commodity, concentrating upon three related issues. The first is that of Marx’s notion of the subsistence (or natural) wage rate: subsistence wage will be shown to stem, according to Marx, from socially determined conditions of reproduction of an efficient labouring class. The second issue refers to the distinction between the natural and the market wage rate that can be found in Marx, and his critique of Ricardo’s analysis of the determinants of the price of labour. Here the “law of population peculiar to capitalist mode of production” (that is, Marx’s industrial reserve army mechanism) will be considered, both with respect to cyclical fluctuations of wages and to their trend over time. Moreover, a classification of the social and institutional factors affecting the average wage rate will be advanced. Finally, Marx’s analysis of the effects of technical progress on both absolute and relative wages will be considered, also relating it back to the long-standing debate on the Marxian law of the falling rate of profit, and addressing some possible scenarios of the trend of wages and distribution. -
Keywords—Marxism 101 Session 1 Bourgeoisie
Keywords—Marxism 101 Session 1 Bourgeoisie: the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labour. Capital: an asset (including money) owned by an individual as wealth used to realize a fnancial proft, and to create additional wealth. Capital exists within the process of economic exchange and grows out of the process of circulation. Capital is the basis of the economic system of capitalism. Capitalism: a mode of production in which capital in its various forms is the principal means of production. Capital can take the form of money or credit for the purchase of labour power and materials of production; of physical machinery; or of stocks of fnished goods or work in progress. Whatever the form, it is the private ownership of capital in the hands of the class of capitalists to the exclusion of the mass of the population. Class: social stratifcation defned by a person's relationship to the means of production. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System.png Class struggle: an antagonism that exists within a society, catalyzed by competing socioeconomic interests and central to revolutionary change. Communism: 1) a political movement of the working class in capitalist society, committed to the abolition of capitalism 2) a form of society which the working class, through its struggle, would bring into existence through abolition of classes and of the capitalist division of labor. Dictatorship of the Proletariat: the idea that the proletariat (the working class) has control over political power in the process of changing the ownership of the means of production from private to collective ownership as part of a socialist transition to communism. -
Of Labour-Power
Chapter 6: The Sale and Purchase 'of Labour-Power The change in value of the money which has to be transformed into capital cannot take place in the money itself, since in its function as means of purchase and payment it does no more than realize [realisieren] the price of the commodity it buys or pays for, while, when itsticksto its own peculiar form, it petrifies into a mass of value ofconstantmagnitude. 1 Just as little can this change origin· ate in the second act of circulation, the resale of the commodity, for this act merely converts the commodity from its natural form back into its money-form. The change must therefore take place in the commodity which is bought in the first act of circulation, M-C, but not in its value, for it is eqUivalents which are being ex- changed, and the commodity is paid for at its full value, The change can therefore originate only in the actual use-value of the eommodity, i.e. in its consumption. In order to extract value out of the consumption of a commodity, our friend the money-owner must be lucky enough to find within the sphere of circulation, on the market, a commodity whose possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value, whose actual consumption is therefore itself an objectification [ Vergegenstiindlichung] of labour, hence a creation of value: The possessor of money does find such a special commodity on the market: the capacity for labour [Arbeitsvermogen], in other words labour-power [Arbeitskraft]. We mean by labour-power, or labour-capacity, the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in the physical form, the living personality, of a human being, capabilities which he sets in motion whenever he produces a use-value of any kind. -
FRANTZ FANON and the "LUMPENPROLETARIAT" Peter
FRANTZ FANON AND THE "LUMPENPROLETARIAT" Peter Worsley IN 1960, I attended the All-African People's Congress in Accra, Ghana. The proceedings consisted mainly of speeches by leaders of African nationalism from all over the continent, few of whom said anything notable. When, therefore, the representative of the Algerian Revolutionary Provisional Government, their Ambassador to Ghana, stood up to speak for his country, I prepared myself for an address by a diplomat-not usually an experience to set the pulses racing. Instead, I found myself electrified by a contribution that was remarkable not only for its analytical power, but delivered, too, with a passion and brilliance that is all too rare. I discovered that the Ambassador was a man named Frantz Fanon. During his talk, at one point, he almost appeared to break down. I asked him afterwards what had happened. He replied that he had suddenly felt emotionally overcome at the thought that he had to stand there, before the assembled representatives of African nationalist movements, to try and persuade them that the Algerian cause was important, at a time when men were dying and being tortured in his own country for a cause whose justice ought to command automatic support from rational and progressive human beings. I think this incident reflects one special quality that is characteristic of Fanon's writing also : its passion. It is also ruthlessly honest and highly intellectual, if not always worked-through. It is this special blend of intellect and passion that stamps Fanon's work as the pro- duct of a unique and powerful mind. -
Labour Process and the Division of Labour, a Reading Bruno Tinel
Labour process and the division of labour, a reading Bruno Tinel To cite this version: Bruno Tinel. Labour process and the division of labour, a reading. 2009. halshs-00435252 HAL Id: halshs-00435252 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00435252 Submitted on 24 Nov 2009 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Documents de Travail du Centre d’Economie de la Sorbonne Labour process and the division of labour, a reading Bruno TINEL 2009.74 Maison des Sciences Économiques, 106-112 boulevard de L'Hôpital, 75647 Paris Cedex 13 http://ces.univ-paris1.fr/cesdp/CES-docs.htm ISSN : 1955-611X Labour process and the division of labour, a reading1 Bruno TINEL Centre d’Économie de la Sorbonne Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne [email protected] Abstract This article proposes an analysis of the labour process and the division of labour in capitalist production through a reading of Marx and a few others like Babbage and Braverman. The distinction between labour and labour power is used to expose the specificity of the labour process. Cooperation constitutes the fundamental form of capitalist production, which entails a double-sided command (coordination to produce use-values and despotism to extract surplus-value). -
The Marxist Theory of Overaccumulation and Crisis
The Marxist Theory of Overaccumulation and Crisis Simon Clarke In this paper I intend to contrast the `falling rate of profit’ crisis theories of the 1970s with the `underconsumptionism' of the orthodox Marxist tradition. The central argument is that in rejecting traditional underconsumptionist theories of crisis contemporary Marxism has thrown the baby out with the bathwater, with unfortunate theoretical and political consequences. A more adequate critique of traditional underconsumptionism leads not to the falling rate of profit, but to a dis- proportionality theory of crisis, which follows the traditional theory in seeing crises not as epochal events but as expressions of the permanent tendencies of capitalist accumulation. The background to the paper is my recent book, Keynesianism, Monetarism and the Crisis of the State (Clarke, 1988a), in which analysed the development of capitalism on the basis of a version of the theory of overaccumulation and crisis which is proposed here. However in the book this theory is developed in relation to the historical analysis, without reference to either traditional or contemporary debates. The purpose of this paper is to draw out the theoretical significance of the argument as the basis of a re- evaluation of the Marxist tradition. The issue is of the highest importance as erstwhile Marxists, in both East and West, fall victim once more to the `reformist illusion' that the negative aspects of capitalism can be separated from the positive, that the dynamism of capitalism can be separated from its crisis tendencies, that capitalist prosperity can be separated from capitalist immiseration. 1 Contemporary Marxist Crisis Theory The Marxist theory of crisis is distinguished from bourgeois theories in the first instance in being concerned with the necessity of crisis, in order to establish that the permanent stabilisation of capitalism and amelioration of the class struggle, on which reformism pins its hopes, is impossible. -
LABOUR POWER and the STATE Aboot. Aumeeruddy Bruno Lautier and Ramon G. Tortajada
LABOUR POWER AND THE STATE AbooT. Aumeeruddy Bruno Lautier and Ramon G . Tortajada The Marxist theory of the state has developed in three main directions : the study of the relation between the bourgeoisie and the state ; the study of the functioning of the state ; and the study of its role in the valorisation of capital . However, it seems to us that the essential question is that of the foundation of the state under capitalism . This foundation must be sought in the wage-relation, whose reproduction is never given a priori. Hence the necessity for a study of the relation between the state and labour-power . INTRODUCTION The debate on the nature and function of the state under capitalism takes two forms . The first type of debate is concerned mainly with the 'intervention' of the state in the field of the production and circulation of commodities. More precisely, it is a debate about the way in which, once the social conditions for the production of value have been achieved, the state intervenes in the way this value is divided up. This activity affects the division between wages and profits as much as the division of profit be- tween fractions of capital . This activity implies, among other things, the regulation of money . The second type of debate is about the very nature of the state, and about the links it maintains with the class structure of society ; in particular, it is concerned with whether or not the state establishes the central social relation of capitalism, the wage-relation . We do not deny the importance of the first type of debate . -
A Critical Marxist Approach to Capital Theory
Munich Personal RePEc Archive A Critical Marxist Approach to Capital Theory Cavalieri, Duccio University of Florence 9 October 2013 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/50527/ MPRA Paper No. 50527, posted 10 Oct 2013 05:00 UTC Duccio Cavalieri (University of Florence) A Critical-Marxist Approach to Capital Theory 1. Beyond Marx’s treatment of capital theory. The present paper aims at providing a logically consistent reformulation of Marx’s theories of value and capital. The author’s purpose is to draw the main lines of a critical-Marxist reconstructive approach to Marx’s theory of capital. By critical-Marxist we mean an approach internal to the cultural tradition of Western Marxism which takes Marx’s system as main reference point, but does not regard it as something that should be accepted or rejected in toto. Critical Marxists do not interpret Marx’s intellectual heritage dogmatically. They do not consider Marxism a science, but a method of social research, and do not hesitate to call Marx’s views in question and to contrast them on specific points, when this is needed. The line of demarcation between ‘critical’ social theory and ‘scientific’ or fundamentalist Marxism is not easy to trace. ‘Orthodox’ Marxists consider Marxism a science, the science of the laws of motion of society. They practice economic reductionism and determinism and underline the methodological relevance of dialectical materialism.1 A possible line of separation between orthodox and critical Marxism could be identified in their respective acceptance and refusal to stress the importance of the available quantities of physical inputs in production and to downgrade the relevance of money. -
Basic Principles of Marxian Economics
Prof. John H. Munro [email protected] Department of Economics [email protected] University of Toronto http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/munro5/ Economics 301Y and 303Y Some Basic Principles of Marxian Economics Updated September 2008 Introductory Note: In the following, I have tried to make the basic principles of Marxian economics as clear and as concise as possible, though I certainly cannot pretend to be any authority on Marxism in general or on Marxian economics in particular. While I shall try to clarify any points related to the following, please do not ask me to defend any of the following principles of Marxian economics, since I do not believe in them all. In particular, I do not accept the fundamental principles underlying the labour theory of value. Since most of my colleagues in Economics also do not accept any of these principles, it is hardly surprising that Marxian economics is not taught as such in any generally available course in this department. That lacuna is perhaps regrettable, given the importance of Marxism in courses in Political Science, Philosophy, and History; and more generally, given the enormous impact that Marxism and Marxist political movements have had upon world history since the 1890s. Marxism and Marxian economics have also had a very significant impact upon the literature of economic history in the 20th and 21st centuries; and, though my personal sympathies in political economy do not generally lie in this direction, I feel that my duty as an educator is to discuss and make available all points of view in the economic history literature, including the Marxist points of view. -
On the Identity of Value and Labour a Defence of Intrinsic Value
On the Identity of Value and Labour A Defence of Intrinsic Value Philip Dunn Independent Economist Email: [email protected] October 2002 Abstract The notion of intrinsic value is examined in the light of recent developments in value theory. It is recognised that embodied labour is unsustainable as a basis for the intrinsic value of money and labour-power. An alternative is proposed that treats the values of commodities as Aristotelian powers. A systematic dialectical approach is adopted. Starting from a totality characterised as intrinsic labour value, successive splits are imposed. Firstly, money labour value, buying power, is distinguished from non-money labour-value, selling power. Secondly, the vacuous circularity of seeing the value of money as the power of command over non-money and the value of non-money as the power of command over money is relieved by distinguishing between the relative value and the equivalent value of non- money. Thirdly, a distinction is made within non-money between labour- power as the power to create value and its actuality as activity/result. At this point the insight of the value form school that labour-time, as measured on the clock, is irrelevant to the value of the produced commodity is incorporated. The relevance of clock-measured labour times as equivalents for money is, however, emphasised to remedy the quantitative weakness of existing value-form approaches. Fourthly, the activity/ result of relative labour, but not equivalent labour, is split into activity, potential value, and result, actual value. Temporality is now introduced into what has been up to this point a timeless world.