I wrote: >> maybe he's suggesting that industrial capital as a social
relationship isn't a commodity. It involves a non-market (non-commodity)
relationship of domination of workers within production. (Of course, that
authoritarianism is within the framework of a commodity-producing society
that treats labor-power like a commodity. But the relationship within the
company during a contract period is typically not a commodity relationship
of buying and selling.)<<
Steve P writes: >Hang on here, are producers during a contract period ever
forced to stay on a job? Not free to leave a job? If not, I don't see how
they don't qualify as involved in a relationship that involves buying and
selling of labor power. <
What I had in mind was Marx's vol. I, ch. 15 s. 331 distinction between the
division of labor in society and the division of labor in manufacture (or
more generally within capitalist hierarchies). He refers there to the
"anarchy in the social division of labor and despotism in that of the
workshop" which "differ not only in degree, but also in kind" but mutually
condition each other (quotes on p. 337 and 334 of the 1967 hardback
printing of the International Publishers' edition).
But getting beyond Marxology, Juliet Schor and Sam Bowles developed the
idea of the "cost of job loss," which is especially high when the reserve
army of the unemployed is large (but also is high for individuals who will
lose medical benefits, etc. due to firing or quitting). A positive CoJL
implies that even though proletarian workers obviously aren't slaves, they
also aren't totally "free to leave a job."
Mat writes: >So, Coase's 1930s article, Jim? And why wouldn't that apply to
social relations in capitalist agriculture?<
I don't get what you mean by the reference to Coase here. But as Coase
noted, capitalists don't make deals with individual workers at each point
to do task X or to go to division Y. Rather, they order workers to do
"their jobs" within the limits of the contract. (Workers do not sell a set
of predetermined services to the boss; rather, they are paid to submit to
the authority of the boss for a specific time period.) And of course, the
bosses take advantage of the cost of job loss to reinterpret the contract
in their favor, so the cost of job loss determines the limits of the
bosses' authoritarianism. (BTW, Michael Reich and I published an article
about this kind of stuff a couple of decades ago, in the REVIEW OF RADICAL
POLITICAL ECONOMICS.)
I also don't get what you're talking about concerning agriculture. However,
the history of agriculture under capitalism has been a matter of the
reduction of farmers to the status of proletarians. Most farmers have
become either wage-workers or (for a small number) hired managers. US
agriculture seems a perfect case of the story Marx told in CAPITAL of
simple commodity production turning into its opposite.
>My hunch is that there is a confusion about the term "commodity." That he
may be thinking that commodities are consumption goods or something. I
would define commodity a little more specifically than Rod, but basically
along the same lines: a commodity is
anything that is produced for sale in a market, or anything that is bought
and sold in a market. "Produced for sale," because some commodities are
produced but are not actually sold (like Rod's "for sale," only I would add
in a market [though someone could say if it is for sale it must be in a
market, but... ]), due to lack of demand or what have you. But also bought
and sold, because some commodities may not be "produced" in the same sense
as standard reproducible commodities are (labor power, land-- though we can
talk about how and in what senses these are produced and reproduced). <
Labor-power is treated like a commodity even though it's not totally
produced for sale (yet). The fact that LP isn't _totally_ a commodity is a
sign that capitalism isn't totally about commodity production and exchange.
It's also about the alienation, domination, and exploitation of human beings.
>Of course, George can explain what he meant. But I agree with Rod about
the importance of that first sentence and more generally Marx's decision
concerning how to begin _Capital_. I remember there used to be some
disagreement about how to teach _Capital_, that some would begin with ch.
10, I think, and then go back to the beginning.<
I think the line (which originates with Althusser and Balibar, I believe)
is that one should start with chapter 4, which gets you beyond the
hard-to-read and "Hegelian" first three chapters.
>I'm glad my teachers began at the beginning and went straight through,
exactly as Marx intended. But let's hope it is still being taught at all!
I'm lucky to have been at the New School when Ross Thompson was still there
teaching the Intro to Political Economy 1 and 2 and when Advanced Political
Economy was still required and taught by Shaikh, and when Political Economy
meant studying Marx. It hurts to think that these courses have either been
changed or are no longer required.<
what happened? How did Marx get flushed?
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/~JDevine/JDevine.html
