From: Ian Hunt (Ian.Hunt@FLINDERS.EDU.AU)
Date: Mon Apr 18 2005 - 01:35:15 EDT
Dear Rakesh, Your comments raise more issues than I can cope with at present. I will give your more far reaching comments on wage-labour some thought. I now have only one small comment. I don't think your definition of value will work. Why can't there be value without unpaid labour? Why not value without wage labour? What you offer as the definition of 'value' I would take as (or as close to) the definition of the capital - wage labour social relation of production. I don't regard monopoly as a difficulty for my definition (nor do I regard rent as a difficulty either). Most monopoly is only partial. Where it is total ( a perfect natural monopoly) you have an anomaly in capitalist commodity production: which accords with how capitalists in general view it but also accords with the thought that socially necessary labour time has little content in such a case either, Cheers, Ian >Dear Ian, > >You wrote > >> >>I take "value" to be a social relation of production: so it does >>speak to the specific finished form of value. Value in the abstract >>is defined by discipline of labour of production through market >>competition > >I don't see the grounds for that definition. Why not define value as >the appropriation of unpaid labor time in the form of money through >the production of commodities by means of wage labor? To be sure, >market competition distributes surplus value but value and labor >discipline can exist with low a low degree of competition, no? >Predicating value on market competition threatens to make it >inapplicable to monopolistic forms of capital. Just as with Sweezy >and Baran. > > > >> but it takes on more specific forms such as wage labour for capital etc. > >If by value we mean 'self expanding value' then I would say that wage >labor is not a more specific form, but constitutive-- though I would >follow Banaji's conception of wage labor. > > >> The phenomena you mention are all more concrete, modified forms of >>wage-labour for capital. >> On a straight empiricist methodology, we would all have throw our >>hands up and accept that nothing general can be said (surplus value >>isn't essential either, since plenty of firms operate at a loss for >>a period). > >Following Banaji, I reject a simple empiricism which equates wage >labor with its general visible form, i.e. payment of money wages to >apparently free wage laborers. Which is how I think the self named >social relations school here defines it. I have raised a couple of >objections to this school: the wage can take multiple forms, and the >wage contract is not in fact free or only spectrally so. I am >pointing to an underlying relation of production. Which is not >immediately visible as are the more common relata. > > >> I employ a methodology of Marxian-Galilean abstraction: given >>this, the points you make about varying empirically encountered >>features (the way the wage is paid etc) doesn't really affect the >>defining feature of wage-labour for capital, > >But here then is the debate--what is the defining feature of wage >labor? Marxists should have clarity about that! I don't think they >do. Which I was have pursued this argument for several years now on >OPE-L! > >On Marx's Galileanism, two authors whom I have read have developed >the theme--Leswak Nowak and Daniel Little. > > > > >>although, of course, it is important to note that it can sometimes >>take a form intermediate between its classic case and slavery, as in >>tenant farming in the post Civil War US South. > >The opposition of classic versus other cases only privileges forms >dominant for some workers for some time in some parts of the West. >That is, it represents as marginal many parts of the actual history >of the capitalist system. But those other histories may prove more >generally relevant in the years ahead. > >De fabula narratur! > >May I recommend this excellent review > >"Labour History as the History of Multitudes" >Marcel van der Linden, Multitudes > >Reviewing: >Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, >The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic >(Boston: Beacon Press 2000) > >http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=04/11/02/1744204&mode=nested&ti> > >Marx's thesis is based on two dubious assumptions, namely that labour >needs to be offered for sale by the person who is the actual bearer >and owner of such labour, and that the person who sells the labour >sells nothing else.16 Why does this have to be the case? Why can >labour not be sold by a party other than the bearer? What prevents >the person who provides labour (his or her own or that of somebody >else) from offering packages combining the labour with labour means? >And why can a slave not perform wage labour for his master at the >estate of some third party? > >Asking these questions brings us very close to the idea that slaves, >wage-labourers, share-croppers, and others are in fact an internally >differentiated proletariat. The target approach is therefore one that >"eliminates as a defining characteristic of the proletarian the >payment of wages to the producer."17 The main point appears to be >that labour is commodified, although this commodification may take on >many different forms. > > It is definitely not a coincidence that the acknowledgements of The >Many-Headed Hydra list Yann Moulier Boutang and his book De >l'esclavage au salariat published in 1998.18 After all, in his >extensive study (elaborating on the work of Robert Miles and others), >Moulier Boutang supplies arguments supporting the position that >bonded labour is essential for capitalism to function, both in the >past and nowadays. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who have also >been inspired by Moulier Boutang, summarize a substantial portion of >his theory as follows: > >Slavery and servitude can be perfectly compatible with capitalist >production, as mechanisms that limit the mobility of the labor force >and block its movements. Slavery, servitude, and all the other guises >of the coercive organization of labor - from coolieism in the Pacific >and peonage in Latin America to apartheid in South Africa - are all >essential elements internal to the process of capitalist >development.19 > Marx called slavery "an anomaly opposite the bourgeois system >itself," which is "possible at individual points within the bourgeois >system of production," but "only because it does not exist at other >points."20 > >If Moulier Boutang and others are right, then Marx is mistaken here. >In this case, "free" wage labour would not be the favoured labour >relationship under capitalism, but only one of several options. >Capitalists would always have a certain choice how they wished to >mobilize labour-power. And bonded labour would under many >circumstances remain an alternative. > > If this conclusion is justified, then labour historians will indeed >be expected to expand their field of research considerably. Linebaugh >and Rediker write: "The emphasis in modern labor history on the >white, male, skilled, waged, nationalist, propertied artisan/citizen >or industrial worker has hidden the history of the Atlantic >proletariat of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth >centuries." (Linebaugh and Rediker, 332) > > > >Yours, Rakesh -- Associate Professor Ian Hunt, Head, Dept of Philosophy, School of Humanities, Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Flinders University of SA, Humanities Building, Bedford Park, SA, 5042, Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2784
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