From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Apr 24 2006 - 22:46:10 EDT
Re: [OPE-L] Bloody Capital and Dead Labour Cultural StudieAnother thought occurred to me upon further reflection (it's hard trying
to reconstruct your intentions from a post written 10 years ago!) : I was
replying to a question from (former member) Massimo de Angelis. Massimo,
you might recall, was influenced in his interpretations of _Capital_ by
Harry Cleaver's _Reading Capital Politically_. By answering Massimo in
the way that I did -- by highlighting undead _labor_ -- I was perhaps being a
tad mischievous since I wanted to suggest that the vampire metaphor which
he himself in effect raised for discussion is not consistent with Harry's
interpretation. I couldn't locate a response from Massimo and I'm not sure
if he sent one. What I would have liked, I think, was an exchange
between Harry's and Massimo's interpretation of _Capital_ vs. Mike L's
(and that's one reason when I then initiated a thread on subjectivity).
[This relates to a discussion we had in Fall, 1995 on Book III (Wage-Labour)
in the 6-book-plan -- a subject that I tried to re-raise for discussion
at various times in various ways in the years since.]
In solidarity, Jerry
Sat, 4 May 1996 04:56:48 -0700
Massimo asked in [OPE-L:2072]:
> "A great deal of capital, which appears today in the United States
> without any birth-certificate, was yesterday, in England,
> the capitalised blood of children." (V.I. p. 921)
> I guess also the quote could be dismissed on the ground that
> it represents a simple metaphor, in which case I would like
> ask: a metaphor for what? May I have your
> distinguished views on the matter
It's a vampire metaphor, of course. Taking the metaphor literally, one could
refer to labor as "undead labor" -- neither completely living or truly dead.
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