Hi, Mike, it's good to hear from you--How are things on Lasqueti? You wrote >Hi Gil, > I'm off on that isolated island again and so have no access to that > [Albritton-Zmolek] exchange (unless it's available on-line); I'd love to > hear what you found interesting and what you found annoying. As for > avoiding a return to the Chapter 5 'quagmire' (although, as you know, > I've always felt the problem--if any-- is in Chapter 6), that remains to > be seen. [Prompted by your comments about Chapter 6, I've extended the Chap. 5 critique to include Marx's argument there, but continue to believe the problem starts with 5--in fact I think I have an even clearer sense of the problem now than in our last exchange on the topic, partly because that last exchange--and subsequent ones here on OPE-L--have prompted me to read both Capital and its "dress rehearsals"--Grundrisse and Ec Mss of 1861-63--more carefully. As for returning to the Ch. 5 quagmire, I'm keeping to a self-imposed restriction not to pursue that issue any further on OPE-L--though if the following piques your interest and leads into Ch. 5 territory I'd be pleased to pursue it with you offline.] In a nutshell, Albritton takes issue with Brenner's contention that British "agrarian capitalism" was the prime mover of capitalism, arguing the commodification of labor power is a necessary basis of the latter, and that LP was insufficiently commodified until the 2nd half of the 19th (!) century to allow commercial farming in Gr. Br. to be called "capitalist." I find the topic, and several of the historical details adduced in the debate, to be intrinsically interesting, but the debate itself annoying in that the central issue seems to me miscast by Albritton right from the beginning, and Zmolek doesn't really call him on it. [However, in light of Albritton's characterization, I now understand why Rakesh has taken issue with my suggestion that putting-out was characterized by commodification of labor power!] Albritton, in my reading, gets off on the wrong foot right off the bat in his initial 1993 article in JPStud by asserting "In order for value to be able to expand itself according to the basic formula of capital M-C-M', capital must totally subsume the labour and production process such that all inputs and outputs are totally commodified." [1993, p. 420] Albritton gives no reference or justification for this reading, and to me it seems highly problematic. Let alone that "labour process" and "production process" refer to the same thing, and that subsumption in the Marxian sense Albritton putatively intends has nothing whatsoever to do with the commodification of *outputs* (this being presumed in the first place), Albritton simply and fundamentally misrepresents Marx in asserting categorically that M-C-M' *requires* "total subsumption" of labor under capital. To the contrary, I read Marx as repeatedly asserting, in the Grundrisse, Ec Mss 1861-63, Resultate, and KIII, that in two historical cases, usury and merchant capital respectively financed productive activity (the putting-out system being an instance of the latter), reaping surplus value via the circuit of capital M-C-M' *did not* involve subsumption of labor under capital. But my major problem with Albritton's framing of the argument lies in his conceptualization of "fully commodified labor power" (FCLP), for which also he gives no theoretical justification or grounding in Marx's writing. By his definition, FCLP has no less than 6 components: 1) Workers are completely separated from all means of production; 2) Workers have no means of support outside their wage. "This implies[sic] that they must receive a 'subsistence wage'..." 3) Wages are paid frequently (usually weekly) in money form. 4). The relation between capital and labor is totally impersonal in the sense that capital treats labor as simply a commodity input. In other words capital freely hires and fires labor as needed, and "*freely organizes the combination of labour-power and other productive inputs in the production process. 5) Workers must, at least in principle, be mobile in order to be able to respond to changes in supply and demand in the labour market. 6) No form of extra-economic force interferes with the labor market whether from labor, capital, landlords, the state, or any other interventionist source. [p. 424] Ach, where to begin? This definition is an incredibly unwieldy basis for a careful historical analysis. Marx's definition is much simpler: labor power is commodified if capitalists can find on the market individuals who offer their ability to work for sale. Albritton's condition (1) deals with a (possible) *economic basis* for labor power commodification (LPC), not the condition itself; and while Marx did think this was a necessary condition for LPC, he didn't include this as part of his definition of the phenomenon. Bad form at least to include one's theory of the phenomenon in the definition of the phenomenon--the theory could be wrong, and even non-dispossessed workers might supply labor power (as indeed they often do)--what then? (2) has the same problem as (1), but adds the non sequitur that if workers receive no other means of support, the wage must be at its subsistence level. This is not necessarily the case, of course, and Marx does not categorically affirm this conclusion (i.e., he allows the possibility that the wage may rise above its subsistence level). (4) assumes in effect that subsumption of labor under capital (SLC) is simply an aspect of LPC. But this need not be the case--arguably, in fact, the putting-out system is an instance in which you have LPC but not SLC --and more to the point this is not how Marx defines the terms (More on this point below). For Marx, SLC presupposes LPC, but not necessarily vice-versa. (5) again confuses market conditions that inform LPC rather than LPC itself. Suppose that non-mobile coal mining workers sell their labor power in an Appalachian "company town." I don't see why their labor power can't be considered commodified from a Marxian perspective. (6) seems excessively strong, since it suggests, as Marx never did, that labor power was not commodified in any labor market to which the Factory Acts (for example) applied. Nonsense. Marx's whole point that legislation like the Factory Acts was *necessitated* by capitalism's rapacious greed for surplus labor once LP was commodified. In short, when Albritton defines FCLP in this way, I think he establishes his point at the cost of making it essentially irrelevant to what Brenner--or Marx--was arguing. >You wrote: >>Viewing the putting-out system through the lens of Marx's analytical >>categories, I understand the putting-out system to be an instance of the >>circuit of merchant's capital that involves the commodification of labor >>power but *not* the subsumption of labor under capital, in even the >>formal sense. Insofar a this system is a form of surplus value >>production, then subsumption is not required for capitalist exploitation, >>or at least wasn't required under the class conditions obtaining in that era. >> >>If this is an accurate summary, it prompts two questions: first, what >>made it possible for capitalist exploitation to occur without even the >>formal subsumption of labor under capital, and second, would it be >>possible for surplus value to exist--if perhaps not at the same magnitude >>as in the circuit of industrial capital characterized by wage labor and >>capitalist production--on the basis of putting-out production under >>modern class conditions? > > There are two questions that, in my view, need clarification: (1) > what do you mean by formal subsumption I mean it in the same sense that Marx does--indeed, my intent is exactly to proceed from his definition--as spelled out in the Resultate and the Ec Mss. 1861-63. Formal subsumption is said to exist when "the capitalist intervenes in [a pre-existing labor] process as its director, manager" (Resultate, p 1019) without at all changing the process of production itself (which would constitute the real subsumption of labor under capital). Thus *formal* subsumption involves (merely) direct oversight of given production processes by capitalists. As we'll see below, Marx explicitly excludes the putting-out system from this rubric. > and (2) what do you mean by the putting-out system? Consider several > alternative states. In each, the craftworkers own some of their own means > of production (e.g., a loom) and work within their own homes. > A. The craftsman (X) obtains raw materials (RM) from the merchant > (Y), transforms them in some way and yields all the finished products > (P) to Y and receives in return a money-payment. This is the scenario that corresponds to my understanding of the putting-out system, though your use of the verb "obtains" for what X does with the raw materials may beg a question. One could as readily--and perhaps more historically accurately-- put it that merchant Y supplies craftsman X with raw materials and engages him to transform them to finished products (P) for a consideration paid in money. > B. X obtains RM from Y, transforms them and yields a portion (q) > of P to Y; the remaining portion X sells as commodities (in C-M-C). q is > determined in accordance with a contractual ratio of P/RM. > C. X obtains RM from Y, transforms them and yields a portion (q) > of P to Y; the remaining portion X sells as commodities (in C-M-C). q is > determined as a given proportion of P. I take cases (B) and (C) to be particular forms of usury capital, in which the initial capital is supplied in commodity form. Here the word "obtains" is operative: X determines the production process, and thus determines what raw materials are needed. Here q, whether it's "determined in accordance with a contractual ratio of P/RM" "determined as a given proportion of P" or simply a fixed payment, takes the form of an interest payment or profit share. > There are obviously other variants but these may suffice. How > would you distinguish among these? Ie., do you see these as qualitatively > different? Yes, for the reason suggested above: in *supplying* a given set of raw materials to the craftsman, the merchant capitalist to that small extent plays a role in determining the process of production. I take the key difference between putting-out merchant capital and interest capital financing production to be that in the latter case, the capitalist does not determine the conditions of production in any way. However.... > I would describe A as a case where the worker is formally > subsumed under capital. The worker here has property rights in neither > the raw materials nor the finished products, works in accordance with the > goal of that merchant and only in and through the merchant- > manufacturer's capital. Of course, we're all free to use definitions as we see fit. But following Marx, I do not characterize case (A) as an instance of formal subsumption: "A further example is *merchant's capital*, which commissions a number of immediate producers, then collects their produce and sells it, perhaps making them advances in the form of raw material [Bingo!--GS], etc. or even money. It is this form that provides the soil from which modern capitalism has grown and here and there it still forms the transition to capitalism proper. Here too we find no formal subsumption of labor under capital." [Resultate, p. 1023] (He repeats this distinction in the Ec Mss of 1861-63 as well.) > Obviously, the limited surveillance means that workers are cheating as > much as possible in order to extract themselves from this relationship > but this would not alter the nature of the relation. Yes, and under Marx's conceptual framework, this cheating was part of what prompted the move to formal subsumption of labor under capital, leading to the possibility of reaping gains in the form of *absolute* surplus value. Marx again: "The fact is that capital subsumes the labour process as it finds it, that is to say, it takes over an existing labour process...And since that is the case it is evident that capital took over an available, established labour process. For example, handicraft....If changes occur in these traditional established labour processes after their takeover by capital, these are nothing but the gradual consequences of that subsumption. The work may become more intensive, its duration may be extended, it may become more continuous or orderly under the eye of the interested capitalist...Thus [formal subsumption]...as a form of compulsion by which surplus labour is exacted by extending the duration of labour time... [Resultate, p. 1021] > Now, if my deduction holds (and the putting-out system > encompasses A), your premise above is faulty. I agree that the putting-out system encompasses A, but not, in Marxian terms, that it thus involves formal SLC. > So, either you don't consider A as part of the putting out system or you > don't view it as formal subsumption. In either case (or both), it would > be interesting to know why. Yep, the latter--see above. I'll be interested to know what you think--you may recall that you're the one who got me involved in the study of the putting-out system in the first place, back in the original PEN-L Chapter 5 debate. Gil
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