From: Howard Engelskirchen (howarde@TWCNY.RR.COM)
Date: Thu Jun 17 2004 - 03:52:50 EDT
Hi Costas, Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I do not mean to say that wage labor goes into the making of a slave in the ancient world. The problem is interpreting 'indifference to form.' I think I was not as clear as I could have been. There are different ways of understanding "indifference to form." The significant thing about capitalist conditions is that they strip labor to pure subjectivity, labor is denuded of all objectivity, and as a result it becomes possible to think of labor as "indifferent to form." But because something becomes thinkable under capitalist conditions does not mean that historically it only existed under capitalist conditions. This is the 'man is the key to the anatomy of the ape' problem again. We may recognize something in the ape because of and once we have recognized it in a man. So can we identify 'indifference of form' independent of capitalist conditions now that we are alerted to the significance of the concept? Think of Aristotle's idea, taken over by Hegel, that "all matter is indifferent to form." Find an example of that. You can't, because any matter that actually exists is "en-formed." Nonetheless, in order to get clear on the significance of form we can start with a conception of matter that abstracts from form. This is the substratum that is then formed. My understanding is that Marx treats the activity of labor in this fashion. He considers all labor throughout history, labor transhistorically, as indifferent to form, and then traces the evolution of social production in terms of the different social forms taken by labor. He is able to focus attention on distinct forms of social labor by abstracting from the labor to which it gives form. What he abstracts from, something accessible only conceptually, is un-en-formed labor, labor indifferent to form. One of the social forms of enforming labor that occurs historically is exchange. Exchange can attach to different dominant modes of production. It does not itself become the dominant form of a mode of production except as generalized commodity production, that is, where labor power is bought and sold as a commodity. But there can be the production of exchange value without the buying and selling of labor power as a commodity, that is, without wage labor. Any production that is production for exchange value is labor actually indifferent to form. This is where I was unclear. But there are still two such social forms. In the one case the indifference of labor to form is caused by exchange itself; it is exchange which renders labor commensurable. If I produce on my own small plot use values for the subsistence of my family, but then have a surplus which I take to market, then to the extent of the surplus I am indifferent to the particularity of the labor whose product I offer to sell. It exists for me only as a means to money -- I am indifferent to my own labor and look upon it only as a means to a claim on someone else's labor. In exchange the labor I used equated with all other labor in the market. Nothing depends on whether anyone produced anything by means of wage labor. Capital is different. the indifference of labor to form in the case of capital is not generated by exchange but by the fact that labor is denuded of all objectivity. So that's the difference I'm shooting for. Chances are more clarification would help, but that's a start. Perhaps the following is a barrier to interpreting what I've argued -- do you view value and capital as distinct social objects? I do. I think often there is a tendency to view value as just capital that is not quite ripe yet -- sort of like a green apple -- a necessary analytical stage in order to present the concept of capital clearly, but not a distinct social relation. Howard ----- Original Message ----- From: "Costas Lapavitsas" <Cl5@SOAS.AC.UK> To: <OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU> Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 3:17 PM Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Money, mind and the ontological status of value and abstract labor I cannot respond to Howard's message for a couple of days. But before replying, I would like some clarification. I have isolated two paragraphs, which seem to me important: "Labor abstract in the sense that it is indifferent to the utility of the product which it produces, commodity producing labor, equal and homogeneous labor, is not at all necessarily indifferent to the form of labor -- Marx gives the example of guilds and crafts which remained immersed in the particularity of labor. Indifference to the utility of the product, the thing that causes(!) recourse to exchange, does not at all imply or presuppose indifference to the particularity of labor. The conditions for capitalist production do. Labor as pure subjectivity, as the use value of capital, labor indifferent to form, presupposes production for exchange value, not for use." and "So, yes, slaves embodied abstract labor in the same way money or other commodities did -- by the social substance formed of the union of labor indifferent to form and the social form of the commodity." I read the first as saying that only labour undertaken under capitalist conditions (wage labour?) is indifferent to form. I read the second as saying that slaves embodied abstract labour as social substance formed by the union of labour indifferent to form and the social form of the commodity. Is there something wrong with my reading, or are you suggesting that there was (is?) some sort of capitalist labour going into making someone a slave? Costas
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