On Sat, Nov 15, 2025 at 05:14 PM, hari kumar wrote: > > FWIW - I think that there are some common, possible confusions when > discussing immiseration in 'relative' to 'absolute'. > It is probably important to distinguish. >
The concept of the labourer contains the pauper. > > <It is already contained in the concept of the free labourer, that he is a > pauper: virtual pauper. According to his economic conditions he is merely a > living labour capacity, hence equipped with the necessaries of life. > Necessity on all sides, without the objectivities necessary to realize > himself as labour capacity. If the capitalist has no use for his surplus > labour, then the worker may not perform his necessary labour; not produce > his necessaries. Then he cannot obtain them through exchange; rather, if > he does obtain them, it is only because alms are thrown to him from > revenue. He can live as a worker only in so far as he exchanges his labour > capacity for that part of capital which forms the labour fund. This > exchange is tied to conditions which are accidental for him, and > indifferent to his organic presence. He is thus a virtual pauper. > This is part of a discussion that was introduced on pages 398-399 of the Grundrisse (penguin) in notebook IV and is taken up in earnest in notebook VI, first with the section that the editors have titled "The concept of the labourer contains the pauper" and then the next section, titled "Necessary labour. Surplus labour. Surplus population. Surplus capital," which is dizzying in its dialectic of the necessary and the superfluous, e.g. > > (2) necessary labour appears as superfluous, because the superfluous is > not necessary. It is necessary only to the extent that it is the condition > for the realization of capital. Thus the relation of necessary and surplus > labour, as it is posited by capital, turns into its opposite, so that a > part of necessary labour – i.e. of the labour reproducing labour capacity > – is superfluous, and this labour capacity itself is therefore used as a > surplus of the necessary working population, i.e. of the portion of the > working population whose necessary labour is not superfluous but necessary > for capital. > Having read that passage maybe 20-25 times, I can follow it but it still hurts my brain a bit. Nevertheless, the analysis in this section is breathtaking. There is a difference, however, between virtuoso performance and communication and Marx was acutely aware of that difference. The third mention of surplus population appears in notebook VII (the fragment on machines) and is a brief reprise of the most general conclusions reached earlier. He mentions surplus population several times and copies nearly verbatim the difficult sentence from notebook VI of the Grundrisse. In his draft of Theories of Surplus Value , he mention "a section of the population is thus made redundant" and elsewhere sometimes uses that form as a synonym for surplus population. So by the time he got to the illustrious disposable reserve army of the unemployed in Chapter 25, Marx had rehearsed the concept thoroughly. I don't how he could have been any more emphatic than to refer to his analysis as an absolute general law. Sort of like when Foghorn Leghorn says, "Pay attention to me boy! I'm not just talkin' to hear my head roar." -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#39282): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/39282 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/116301050/21656 -=-=- 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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
