On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 09:57 AM, Tom Walker wrote: > > What he didn't do in Capital, because it wasn't the subject of the book, > was look beyond the law of value.
This is partly wrong. Chapter 10 "The Working Day" is where he does this and in which he mentions disposible time (disponible Zeit). But he slips it into such a feedbag of historical and empirical reportage, along with some bitter sarcasm, that the overwhelmed and by now distracted reader may be excused for not leaping from her armchair and shouting "This! This is the Alpha and Omega! Here is the rose, leap!" There is also a snippet of disponible Zeit in chapter 14 on absolute and relative surplus value. If we string these passages together, guided by the Grundrisse as an interpretive key, we get an echo of Marx's analysis from the Grundrisse. > > Braucht der Arbeiter alle seine Zeit, um die zur Erhaltung seiner selbst > und seiner Race nötigen Lebensmittel zu produzieren, so bleibt ihm keine > Zeit, um unentgeltlich für dritte Personen zu arbeiten. Ohne einen > gewissen Produktivitätsgrad der Arbeit keine solche disponible Zeit für > den Arbeiter, ohne solche überschüssige Zeit keine Mehrarbeit und daher > keine Kapitalisten, aber auch keine Sklavenhalter, keine Feudalbarone, in > einem Wort keine Großbesitzerklasse. > > Die Zeit, während deren der Arbeiter arbeitet, ist die Zeit, während deren > der Kapitalist die von ihm gekaufte Arbeitskraft konsumiert. Konsumiert > der Arbeiter seine disponible Zeit für sich selbst, so bestiehlt er den > Kapitalisten Der Kapitalist beruft sich also auf das Gesetz des > Warenaustausches. > > Es versteht sich zunächst von selbst, daß der Arbeiter seinen ganzen > Lebenstag durch nichts ist außer Arbeitskraft, daß daher alle seine > disponible Zeit von Natur und Rechts wegen Arbeitszeit ist, also der > Selbstverwertung des Kapitals angehört. sozialer Funktionen, zu geselligem > Verkehr, zum freien Spiel der physischen und geistigen Lebenskräfte, > selbst die Feierzeit des Sonntags - und wäre es im Lande der > Sabbatheiligen - reiner Firlefanz! > > > If the worker needs to use all his time to produce the necessary means of > subsistence for himself and his family, he has no time left in which to > perform unpaid labour for other people. Unless labour has attained a > certain level of productivity, the worker will have no such free time at > his disposal, and without superfluous time there can be no surplus labour, > hence no capitalists, as also no slave-owners, no feudal barons, in a word > n o class of large-scale landed proprietors. > > > Hence it is self-evident that the worker is nothing other than > labour-power for the duration of his whole life, and that therefore all > his disposable time is by nature and by right labour-time, to be devoted > to the self-valorization of capital. Time for education, for intellectual > development, for the fulfilment of social functions, for social > intercourse, for the free play of the vital forces of his body and his > mind, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a country of Sabbatarians > !) - what foolishness! > > Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living > labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during > which the worker works is the time during which the capitalist consumes > the labour-power he has bought from him. If the worker consumes his > disposable time for himself, he robs the capitalist. > > That last excerpt could easily be continued on for the next three paragraphs, in which Marx wrote about the struggle between capital and labour over the working day. This is not rocket science. It is the stuff of everyday life in which we all all immersed and from which assigned privilege or subordination. It is that immersion that makes it hard to see it objectively as something that doesn't have to be the way it is. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39218): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39218 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116214508/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
