From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Tue Oct 04 2005 - 19:45:19 EDT
vampire blues> in Capital as a vampire? definitely, yes Riccardo, Capitalists as blood-suckers is a variation on the trans-historical image of the ruling class as parasites. Let us consider the vampire analogy -- and all it implies -- more closely. The analogy to bloodsucking is colorful but misleading. It is not workers' blood that capitalists survive on, it is by capitalizing on what they produce. The commodity is not the blood of workers even if it was produced with workers' blood, sweat, and tears. There is no distinction that capitalists make between virgin workers and experienced ones. If anything, experiences ones -- to the degree that they have more skill -- are more highly prized. Virginity has special meaning in Victorian society when the Dracula myth was popularized; capitalists are willing to exploit both virgins and non-virgins equally. Sunlight is poisonous for vampires. Not so for capital. All hours of the day are utilized where possible to accumulate capital (and, contrary to the image in Volume 1) consume unproductively surplus value. Also, the extraction of surplus value (unlike the extraction of blood by vampires) takes place during all hours of the working day rather than only during the night. Vampires are neither living nor dead -- they are undead. This might seem to fit in rather well with the imagery of capitalists as capital personified. It certainly fits in well with the predatory nature of capitalists as a class. Yet, if capitalists are vampires what does that make workers? Once bitten by a vampire one joins the undead and is condemned *forever* to slavishly follow the commands of one's master. There is *absolutely* no room for subjectivity or revolt on the part of the bitten. Thus, the only prospect for defeating the vampire must come from an *external* source -- i.e. somebody who has never been bitten. This perhaps represents a fantasy of capital but by no means a reality. A good thing too since the working class could never be the "gravediggers" of capital and "expropriate the expropriators" if that were true. Thus, if one believes that this is the message of _Capital_ then all hope is lost and all struggle by workers is impossible since the bitten can not struggle against their vampire master: their blood has been poisoned and they have no will. If this is the message then it is not a revolutionary one. It is therefore a nice analogy but one that is highly misleading if we take it too literally. > my point is that the commodity compels Marx to speak the > language of ghosts and vampires. He spoke the language of ghosts throughout his literary career. For fun I did a search at in the Marx archive at www.marxists.org (click on Marx's head) by typing in "ghost." For an atheist, there were an enormous quantity of references to ghosts -- and on *many* more topics than just the commodity. A "specter" is haunting Europe! It is not the specter of capital, is it? Rather, the specter is communism -- an image that is quite contrary to the imagery of workers as lacking in subjectivity and only capable of following the commands of their vampire master. Perhaps we should have saved this topic for discussion near the end of the month .... In solidarity, Jerry
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